My work

“Why I am in Burkina?”

It is possible that some of you might not know the answer to this question.
So today, I will write about my work here.

I have mainly 3 tasks ;

1. Clean up the city (garbage treatment, sensitization about people’s behavior)

2. Create more green space in the city and protect forests and trees in the suburbs and villages nearby (reforestation and support for local plant producers)

3. Make children aware of the importance of environment protection (education in environment)

Part 1 : Garbage problem

This is not an official dump.
In fact, there is neither dump site nor waste treatment center in Bobo although there are some centers constructed or under construction in a suburb but not yet ready to work.

So where does the garbage from households and factories ?

Answer ;
empty lots / ditch in front of house / own fields for maize or millet / burn it at home etc

Although there are associations which collect domestic garbage once or twice a week, only about 10% of citizens are under contract with them.

Anyway the garbage collected goes to empty lots…

Then at lots, there are some people waiting for it...

Children, women and men look for iron, plastic bottles and boxes, glass, etc which can make them a tiny amount of money for the day.

During the rainy season, all empty lots become field of some cereals.

You see the black spots on the photo. Like this, people burn waste then cultivate there (I can’t avoid thinking how harmful things are melted in the soil, which is no matter for them…)

Or there are some other people who put “all” waste to their field because there is “a little” good matter for soil fertility (ex. garbage from cooking) in the waste.

Can you guess what are these black things ?

They are so “un”durable plastic bags that we can get when we do shopping.They are everywhere in the city floating with wind. How great scenery it is !

Why does the city become more and more black ?

Answers are simple ;
1. like in Japan, each time you buy something, you get the bags for each object
2. As the bags easily tear, people double or triple them
3. As they easily tear, they are thrown away soon after 1st use

People haven’t changed their attitude from in the old days, however garbage has been changed In the past, all waste was biodegradable while nowadays there are more and more waste which is not easy to be decomposed like plastic products take 400 years and glass for 1million years !

As a result, the soil becomes gradually poor. Rain collects on these things which are the perfect place for mosquitoes to propagate and can cause bad smell and other illnesses.

The situation is very cruel. But the civil service has neither financial nor technical capacity to resolve it right now. Me neither… I am just a volunteer with no capacity to settle down and execute a garbage treatment system.

Besides, unless people become aware of the untreated garbage impacts (danger) not only for environment in general but also for their daily life, the situation won’t be changed even if a well structured system is settled…

Then what can I do?

I am thinking about it everyday… Compost ? Plastic recycle ?
When my ideas are ready to be incarnated, I will write them down here.

Today, it was just a report on the actual situation.