INTRODUCTION

I write this article in the name of God the father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Dear friend, they say “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”. Shall we test that? For some time now … Insanitation has been our very loyal Companion. These are made by my own observation and conclusions. No research, Just ME!

THE EVOLUTION OF REFUSE DUMPS

I first want to tell you a real life story about the evolution of a refuse dump in one community. Allow me to be a bit blunt, vulgar and primitive.

For the sake of privacy I would like to keep the names of these places classified, locked and kept in my bank vault. By the way, I lived in town A for two and half years. There were two parallel roads that led to my house and to one of the suburbs. The second road further from my house was created as a result of the danger possessed by the first. That is to say: murders, kidnapping, assault, terror,name it. That road was constructed to make school pupils and town folks feel safer because it was closer to another suburb. I know this because I was told by friends who lived there years before me.

We had a dog. We called him “Bangyi”, short for “Bangyira” in my native tongue which translates into “Faeces”. It acquired this name because early morning, after our compound had been swept by sanitation workers, the dog carried used baby diapers and toiletries back into the neatly kept compound from God knows where. Now we didn’t have a baby and our immediate and only neighbor was hardly ever at home. Our refuse dump contained none of these things the dog imported to the house so where was this dog carrying this “shit” from? It turned out; the newly constructed road which I had not used in a while due to its deplorable state was gradually turning into a refuse dumpsite. I must mention that this road was approximately 70 meters from my house, just a stone throw so this is no speculation. I could tell. I paid a visit to the place and to my uttermost surprise; this road had grown weeds and on the shoulders, lay mini-heaps of household refuse. Before that, every morning I would take a walk around my boring neighborhood admiring school pupil’s zeal towards education and in a distance, down the hill, I would see town folks carrying their refuse to a dump container provided by the District Assembly. But WHAT CHANGED? Why did the folks deviate from dumping refuse at the bin provided by the D.A to dumping household refuse on the poor road? Perhaps it was as a result of proximity. Maybe it was a way advocating for their own bin because they were fed up of descending the hill every morning to dispose of their rubbish but until I can prove that by a research I am planning on embarking, I leave that for the findings to judge. Through some investigations on my own, I found out that the container was absent. I made enquiries and I was told the old one was in bad shape and needed replacement and the D A was doing everything it could to replace it. I still stand by the proximity factor and I am not pointing fingers though, but I wish the D A would speed things up so I would know if my logic is right. UH OH! It’s too late. The place is already a dumpsite. The road I once sped on up and down and provided safety for school children is now a public dumpsite. I whispered to my gumption…Now that’s how dumpsites are created.

Not by mathematical calculations or by astrophysical engineering but by common logic, if the bin is absent, the best place is to dump it is close to the bin’s location to make it easy for collection when the new bin arrives but what did I not see? Ah! well, that brings me to the next topic. Sanitation issues, Human attitude or Human nature?

ATTITUDE OR NATURE

By nature, I don’t mean it’s in the blood or something although part of me is itching to make it so, I simply mean, a habit.

In the case of Town A, these people saw fit, the purpose of the dustbin until there was none. They had the opportunity to place it close to the old bin location but they chose to create their dumpsite. It could be attributed to laziness or they wanted their own waste disposable system. Either way, the road was succumbing to its initial forestry nature until the bin problem forcing it into the “newly created dumpsite”. It is therefore safe to conclude that this is as a result of human attitude.

On human nature I would like to look at a case study of three towns. Now the findings are as a result of observations hence will be told like a story-like manner in an unbiased and professional way. I would keep the name of towns classified just to be fair.

CASE STUDY

A TOWN

I live in Town B currently, a village in a village, top of a mountain, lovely rain forest, and friendly farmer folks. It will interest you to know that this village has no regular water supply and the only way they receive water is by the huge plastic water tank acquired by the Assembly who regularly fill it with water for the folks. We all know for a fact that, water is very crucial in sanitation management. Water is needed for scrubbing, washing, cooking etc. yet despite this situation; these are one of the cleanest people I have ever come across. My four month stay in this hood and there are only two bins, the one in front of my house and the other in front of my neighbors. Did you know, the only refuse swept every morning was goat dung and leaves from trees? Not a single litter in sight by my household, my neighbors or the indigenes. OK, let us assume the dude with his family opposite me decides to practice intensive system of rearing animals rather than free range. That will mean, No more goat shit, goat urine, goat noise pollution at dawn and an unspecified number of goats loitering about. I must point out that despite these inconveniences caused by these animals; he has refused to even sell one to me. That’s hard to deal with but that is just by the way. What if God thought trees shedding leaves littered the environment so there was going to be no need for autumn, I can state categorically for a fact that, the neighborhood would be clean as a whistle. These don’t happen so every morning, it is the normal routine of cleaning goat shit and sweeping leaves. Now I don’t know how they dispose their waste but I am sure if they defecated in the bushes, they had a civilized way of concealing their dirty tracks.

B TOWN

I have been in Town C, a coastal town for quite a while. One day, I was taking a walk down the beach with a female companion and as we walked farther and farther, we approached an elder who was comfortably taking a dunk at the shore. I started to feel very uncomfortable as I was deciding on which route to use. It was too late to turn back. I suggested we use the front and move as far away from him plus to act as though he was non-existent. Passing behind would have been catastrophic giving the content this man was egesting from his system. Before I could say Jack, the old man started hailing verbal abuses at us from all angles. That was not the problem. The problem was his reaction. He sounded as though his company was in charge of the construction of the beach and ocean. He’s not the first; neither will he be the last person. At sun down, this same venue is filled with people like him. They have the same attitude, purpose, actions, just a difference in age and sex.

The big question still remains, is this attitude or it is nature?

A survey shows that, most houses along that coast have access to public lavatories and most homes are installed with modern toilets. Why the preference of the seashore to their house toilets? One of the natives granted an interview to a news reporter and he gave a hilarious reason. The reason being, the breeze that came along with the ocean refreshed their anal pores and gave them a relaxing environment to effectively empty their bowels. Oh what a touching story. Such a person, is it his attitude or his nature?

C TOWN

I lived in Town D for a month and some weeks. On my way, to town, I would pass by an area. A very significant area indeed and there was one thing that could not be ignored in that town. There is a pungent smell that has tortured the folks and passers-by for a very long time. This smell emanates from the beautiful ocean. On the high street that overlooks the ocean, you would see tankers offloading human excrete into the ocean. The people of this town live in this smell. They eat in this, bath in this cook in this. Funny enough, there is the construction of a multi-purpose sports facility on-going about 400 meters away from the dump site. When this facility is complete, we are going to worry about how foreigners are going to cope with this and I am afraid what news they would have about us should they return to their countries.So what action have they taken to curb this? Now, count reporting it to the appropriate authorities out because it doesn’t even show in their memo on meeting days. After all, their per diem and tips they get from these “toilet pullers” are enough for them to worry about folks inhaling the “aroma”. After all, a gathering of “mↄmↄne” can equate to the smell yet “mↄmↄne” makes our soup nice. Anytime the car passed this high street, I could not help but close my nose. While I did this, I would observe the passengers in the in the vehicle. I usually sat at the back so it helped a lot, then I would make my analysis. Only 3 out of about more than 20 passengers reacted to the smell by fidgeting, looking away or closing their noses. The reaction of the rest was that of INDIFFERENCE. They were all straight-faced. They were either talking to their companions or silent. Interestingly, no one could hold their breath for that long. Of course a private vehicle would roll up their windows, turn on the AC and disappear into luxury but what about the silent majority that were tortured in the “trotro?” It was clear that they were used to it. And for those doing the dumping, those watching, those fishing and those pretending it is not happening, is it attitude or nature?

THE WAY FORWARD

Most Ghanaians are good at pointing out problems. I mean it’s easy to criticize and observe but uneasy to bring out easy, straight forward long terms solutions to these problems. Well my solutions are not sophisticated or from Mars or from, the blues, they are very practical and long term. I don’t want to say it’s too late but what I will not say is; it’s not too late. To curb this, we need to instill the habit of good sanitation into all and sundry right from the word go. Yeah right we sweep our schools every morning but it’s also true that grownups sweep the community once every month but what difference has that made? What change has it brought to the lives of people in terms of sanitation matters? I was the assistant compound prefect in my time in junior high but that did not stop me from indiscriminately polluting the environment. There was even this strategy thought to me by a friend, the boys prefect at the time; You pretend you are picking an item you dropped on the floor and skilfully place a sachet water wrapper under your foot and rise up and walk. It will seem as though you walked over that piece of litter when in actual fact you placed it there. But what changed? Where did my liberation come from? My liberation came from the senior high school I attended. But why? How? It was simple, the environment. It was as though students communicated with the environment. Building layouts, lawns, flowers, strategically placed bins. When you schooled in this great institution for three or four years and you littered your surroundings after you completed without feeling the slightest guilt, then I must say that you are capable of MURDER. A question we must ask ourselves is, ARE OUR ENVIRONMENTS SANITATION FRIENDLY? Choked gutters, slums, street hawkers, abattoirs, badly positioned places of interest, traffic jams, more and more.

I did a survey on two households One had a neat kitchen and the other had a neat kitchen. In the latter,there were a lot of unkept dishes waiting to be cleaned the next morning so I asked a member why he never washed his dishes. He answered “the person who washes the dishes doesn’t wash hers so why should I?” The former was the opposite. Anyone who ate cleaned their dishes afterwards. Even if the person who cleaned the dishes failed to clean hers, you don’t have to follow in her stead. But that was not the problem. The problem was not with the dish washer, it was pretty glaring: ORGANISATION. The difference was in organisation. Now if you have a kitchen where you have oil, blender, salt, microwave, and a whole lot kitchenware lying around on the cabinet rather than places provided for them, that will be the resultant effect, CHAOS. The other kitchen was the exact opposite. You will not want your dish to be the only unkept dish in the sink. Globalisation is taking over rapidly and we need to know where we fit in the sanitation cycle before we lose our place in the new world order. We need to adopt EFFECTIVE sanitation measures. It’s late but it’s not too late. Now is not the time to push down buildings and rebuild new ones. I’d be glad if they did though but we have a lot of real estate developers. Take a visit to our modern estate areas. Sanitation literally lives with them. But what is their policy towards sewage control and waste disposal? Just a wild guess but I bet they share the same dumpsite with the average Ghanaian home. Could it be possible that they include underground sewage system to their site plan before they start ploughing the site to lay building foundations? Only if every house could be connected in some sewage network where it runs under the streets through to some place no one knows where and some graduate engineer can figure out a way to turn that into biogas. Then we’ll have cheap fuel. We dig tunnels by the streets for water every day but we can’t dig tunnels for human waste? I’m just thinking out loud.

Anyway, I hear there still continues the national sanitation day. Glad to hear a lot of people, organizations and associations are getting on board. But it’s also sad to see people driving around in their cars on these days, buying porridge, walking about with no sentiment. They are doing what they are doing but we sweeping, what do we do about it? Can we be a bit harsh? Stop them, block the road, query them. It’s not compulsory? Well if there was really freedom of speech, people wouldn’t be fined or jailed for what they said. If they have no tangible reason for not partaking in the exercise, give them a broom to sweep the next mile, fish out families from their homes. After all, nobody likes to dirty an environment they cleaned.

Government, I have been silent for too long about your role in this hullabaloo. Kindly press pause on whatever you are doing and listen. Where did you throw that “ban on plastics” file at? I think now is the time to dig it out and impose it. I have a supermarket I buy goods from, and after purchase of minor items, the sweet lady asks, “rubber?” I reply in the negative. They actually don’t remember the last time I took polythene from them and they even promised a discount on my goods because of that.  What do we see these days: One sachet water; one polythene, two buff loafs you are eating in five minutes; polythene, biscuits; polythene, exercise books; polythene. Polythene everywhere even for small goods. Why would you request a takeaway bag for a bottle of coke you are going to drink on the road? Who or what are you hiding from? It’s not flexing or arrogance like most people will think. It’s just that plastic bags are not eco-friendly. Plus sometimes you open your cabinet and they are all falling out because you no longer send the kids to purchase charcoal for you like in the past. These days, the plastic bags are even of low quality, you ponder about the durability before you even reach your home. You hold the bottom because you can’t trust the handles. At the refuse dumps, plastic bags are the unsung majority. For those of you who don’t know this ban in details, it’s not banning all plastics in general, just a specific class of plastic. Additionally, these plastics are even harmful to human life. I hear it takes a lot of years for a plastic to dissolve in water let alone decay in soil. Make disposable cups affordable and available to breakfast food vendors. It’ll be nice to be driving or walking to your office or workplace with porridge in a plastic cup, your bread or koose in a plastic bowl. It’ll be more classy and civilized rather than having to tear down the bottom of some plastic with your incisors and siphoning that fluid. Eew!

Also,

There should not be more than two dumpsites in a location. You see a lot of “do not litter” warnings but there are no personnel to enforce the punishment on offenders. Even if there are, then they have been invisible all my years I have walked the nation. There are a teaming number of high school graduates who would do anything for a nickel in their pockets. I’m not insinuating anything, but give it a thought. Again, if a sanitation bins where made readily available at every 50 meter stretch on our street with an effective maintenance system, I would have a lot of fun telling people to gather their mess and dump in in the bin close by. At homes, the waste that are generated are classified into three different types. They are; Organic (foods and liquids), Plastics (polythene and others) and Glass. Take note that these should not be combined. Every waste generated at home should have a proper disposable system of these categories of waste generated.

If your town is sinking in a sea of waste, it is not too late. Rather than giving up, do something. Recently an NGO, mercury foundation undertook a project to clean the Keta beach. A man of God once told me, “Wherever you find yourself, always remember to create a void that no one can fill in the event of your departure”. Be the one to begin that house painting project in your community. Be the first to form that sanitation taskforce in your community and remember to practice the three R’s: Reduce waste, Reuse waste and Recycle waste. Say no to insanitation.

CONCLUSION

I’m done. By the way, remember to use Gino tomato paste for your lightsoup. It tastes deliciously delicious which in anyway has no nothing to do with this article. ****wink****

May the good Lord be with us all.

Thank You.