Litter

Maumere is not the cleanest place in the world. When I have showed Indonesian friends some of the photographs on my laptop from my hometown of Bray or of my travels in Australia and London, the initial reaction is always the same - "wah, bersih sekali" (very clean) !


As well as cash income, one of the big obvious differences between a rich country and a poor one is infrastructure (or lack of it) - which of course covers just about everything from transport to healthcare. In Indonesia, the smelly issue of refuse disposal is generally "self managed". When I moved into my house at the hospital, I asked a colleague here what I should do with my household rubbish. I received a rather surprised reply along the lines of "Well, burn it of course !" which is what everyone else does. There aren't any bin lorries making regular household collections although there is a skip at the back of the hospital which is emptied regularly. Where the contents end up is anybody's guess – I intend to follow the truck that empties it someday to see where it goes. This practice of burning everything means that there are little fires everywhere every day and would probably be all right if everything was harmlessly combustible but of course, it isn't. In particular the use of plastic bags here is quite staggering and reminds me of the days before the levy in Ireland (by the way, I see that the levy is soon going up to 44c per bag, probably about the only 100% tax increase which won't raise an uproar). As well as millions and millions of plastic bags, the littering habit here is quite something. Part of the problem, of course, goes back to the lack of infrastructure - there aren't any rubbish bins so if you want to be a good citizen, you have to take your rubbish home (and burn it there). It's much easier to just throw it away on the street so that's usually what happens.

There is however, one form of recycling taking place which I haven't yet quite managed to figure out. This consists of a group of three children, very dirty and ragged, who traipse around the town sifting through piles of rubbish to salvage empty plastic bottles which they stuff into sacks and drag off to somewhere. I don't know what happens them after that but I'm going to try to find out.

Strangely, this offers a strange contrast with the cleanliness of all the houses that I have visited. Dust is everywhere (especially now in the middle of the 8 mont dry season) so the women of the household spend large portions of every day sweeping up and so the areas surrounding houses are usually spotlessly clean.

Another of the major causes of litter are these :

These small plastic "glasses" hold 240ml of drinking water, and have a sealed plastic lid which you have to stab violently with a pointed straw (provided). They are available in every shop and kiosk for about Rp500 (Rp1,000 in Maumere airport though, some things are the same the world over !), are included in every snack box handed out at meetings and are given to guests at home. When you're finished with it, you just throw it on the ground - or burn it, causing all sorts of unpleasant and dangerous fumes....