Community Transformation is Hard

By Anthony:

The oppressive stench of trash piles full of diapers, rotten fruit, swarming insects and dead animals completely encompasses you as you walk by and is enough to make you long for a shower.

But surprisingly, most of us who live in Uganda or similar countries around the world quickly get used to the roads and ditches being filled with trash (known as rubbish in Uganda). The problem of trash here is multi-faceted:

• People litter without a second thought (which is somewhat understandable given that people are used to throwing organic rubbish on the ground and having it disappear quickly from being eaten by animals or decomposing).
• There has been a sudden and overwhelming introduction of plastic into Uganda over a short amount of time (especially bags and bottles).
• There is government inefficiency and corruption.
• Uganda is greatly lacking in organized systems of rubbish pickup and land designated for landfills.
• People generally know that burning plastic isn't very good for the environment, and it is far more difficult and time-consuming than you might expect to burn trash down to nothing.
• The shame and fatalism that material poverty often brings to people can make them feel hopeless about improving their own community.
  
• Rubbish on the ground can be viewed as a small concern and a waste of time when life seems so short and hard. 
• There is a growing individualism in urban areas where people no longer have a community mindset ("we are in this together").

While I often teach about stewardship of God's creation in my Timothy Leadership Training sessions, I myself had become fairly fatalistic on this issue. It just seems so impossible to make any kind of difference when we see people throw trash out the windows of their vehicles whenever we drive anywhere, and as we see dumpsters that are overflowing with garbage just sitting there for months and months without the city coming to empty them. Many of the dumpsters are rusting away with huge holes in them. I've had bursts of hope when pastors who have gone through TLT organize their church members to pick up rubbish in their neighborhoods, but often those very same people who graduated TLT fall back to old habits, and I catch them throwing trash out the window of my vehicle as I am driving them somewhere.

The straw that broke the camel's back for me recently and pushed me out of my lethargy was this: There is a short path going across someone's land near us that connects together two roads. I use this path often when jogging. Unfortunately people have been dumping trash along this path into someone's garden. It's super depressing and icky. One day I was jogging near there and saw a young man carrying a bin of rubbish. I stopped jogging and started up a conversation with him and I was very friendly. But I did ask in a very gentle way if he was going to dump that rubbish into that person's land, and he smiled and said, "yes." I suggested he burn it instead of putting it in someone's garden, but he wouldn't change his mind. It was at that point that I felt like I wanted to at least try doing something. Here is a picture of the area I'm talking about. The picture only shows about half of the rubbish dumped along this short path.  What looks like grass next to all the trash is a garden of rice.

So I decided I should at least do some trash pick-up along our neighborhood roads, to try to lead by example and see if it could help change the mind-set in our community. One of my friends and neighbors, Otidi, agreed to help me. But we were uncertain of what to do with the trash we would pick up and didn't want to get into trouble by burning it in a public area, so I suggested we talk to our local government officials first. That idea bore much fruit.

Sara and I invited Otidi and two local government leaders over to our home for tea and discussion. These leaders were really enthusiastic about the idea. They have been trying to deal with the trash for years but they continually are frustrated by ongoing problems. In the end, we decided we would make this a bigger thing and try to invite other community members to join us in a 1 day trash pickup event. We agreed that the local government leaders would recruit community members and also try to petition the city officials to send a truck to pick up the rubbish we would collect and take it to the landfill, supposedly somewhere in Soroti. And then Sara and I agreed to briefly host all the people for refreshments after the trash pickup.

The local government officials came through with flying colors, and they did things in a very Ugandan way that no longer surprises me. Things had to be "official." They had to draw up minutes of our simple meeting we had over tea, make photocopies, and everyone had to sign them. Then, from what I gather, these two leaders spent many days and hours waiting around in the city offices trying to get some support for our idea, and petitioning the city to send a truck, and maybe support us with some gloves or tools as well. (They wanted me to come to the offices too, but I didn't want the city to do something just because a mzungu was pushing them to do so). These leaders really tried hard, and I see them as very sacrificial local leaders. One thing to understand about Uganda is that much of the real work is done by these local leaders that are practically volunteers, and the bureaucracy and corruption come in at higher levels.

On the day of cleaning it rained, so we started with only a few people, but our numbers then grew over the morning. In the end we had over 30 people in various groups! We spent around 3 or 4 hours. We covered lengths of roads that maybe were the equivalent of 12-15 American city blocks. Not a huge area, but with roadsides already covered with many layers of plastic trash, it takes a while. We collected everything into two big piles in different locations, with one near the garden dump site. We were very limited in our equipment. Otidi gave everyone plastic gloves, but otherwise we had a few wheelbarrows and shovels, and basically no bags for carrying trash. However, given the quantity of garbage everywhere, most of us were able to find old bags or sacks on the ground that we could use to carry stuff we were picking up. 

When our volunteers saw the trash that had been thrown down the hill into someone's land, some were very upset about it. It was thrown in an area that is not easy to clean out or for a truck to pick up. It was good to know I wasn't the only one who felt strongly about this.

This other large pile (in both the picture above and picture below) was not exclusively stuff that we picked up from other places. There used to be a dumpster here, but no longer. Much of this pile was simply spread out over the side of the road for about 50 meters. They did a great job of raking it up.

The best encouragement I got was when I and a few kids were picking up trash along one road, and one of the neighbors came outside and said, "thank you so much for what you are all doing! Please tell us next time you do it and we will join you!" 

People had a good time talking and joking as we picked up trash together. Everyone felt really good that we did something together, and for the benefit of the whole community. I think probably the best result of the whole thing was that these kids learned how great it feels to come together to try to work for the good of your neighborhood. At our home afterwards, people were very excited for corn bread (maize cake) and sodas. 

So what was the final result? It took over 3 weeks and many visits by Otidi and the two local leaders to the city offices before a truck finally came. By the time a truck came, the rain and animals had disorganized our pile. And that truck and crew picked up only one of the big piles we made. The one in the person's garden was apparently too hard for the truck to get at. For the pile they did pick up, I was really disappointed that they seemed to have left about 30% of the original pile and spread it out all over again along the road. I guess I should rejoice at least that they picked up some of it. A few weeks after that truck pick-up, that stretch of road was already just as bad as it was before. Clearly, people still don't know where to bring their trash. I understand that, but it bothers me that people don't make a neat pile, and instead it gets thrown anywhere and everywhere along that road, and the wind blows the trash into people's yards and gardens. It's just awful. As of this week that I'm writing this post, it appears that the city sent a truck to pick up from that pile again. That is something to be thankful for.

As a group, we had talked about doing trash pick-up again, to keep up the momentum and create real change, with the hope that eventually the city would make some changes to their trash pick-up policies. But we haven't yet done another event. I'm waiting to hear from the community members or local leaders again. There's much yet to do. We barely scratched the surface last time. 

On a walk a few weeks after our trash pick-up, I saw a bunch of kids from one home carrying two wheelbarrows of stuff to dump down the hill into the same garden I mentioned before. I suggested they put it in an official dumping site or burn it instead. I'm not sure what they ended up doing. But that person's garden keeps filling up.

The moral of the story? Community transformation is a hard and slow process. It needs incredible patience and repeated effort. We took some steps in a better direction, and as they say here, "we sensitized the community about the rubbish problem" as they observed us cleaning. But leading by example doesn't immediately solve these big systemic problems. The streets we cleared are full of rubbish again. People go back to old habits. 

I think it's a two steps forward one step backward kind of thing. It's going to be a long process of change. But we made a start, and we all enjoyed doing so together. Please pray that something more would come from this. I am thankful for the leaders and community members for the good work that they did, and I praise the Lord for the trash pick-up day that we were able to have.