Reality check

I have been home for awhile now. Settled back to my old habits and patterns ... taking everything for granted again .. hot running water, electricity that is not tempermental, the quietness (everyone is not honking at everyone else!) .... the streets clean ... the pollution hidden .

In Ghana hot water is rare and running water a luxury. The electricity seems to be as much off as on. The noise can be unbelievable with every car honking... every vehicle so old and complaining noisely belching deisel fumes .. And  the pollution and garbage is so in your face. Since it costs money to have your garbage taken away, it is either dumped somewhere or burnt. Everywhere you look there are black plastic bags and the small square clear water bags littering every surface. People sweep up the garbage from their personal space so the immediate area around the shops and homes are cleared. It is the public areas that take the brunt. Along the roads, the streams and rivers ... it is the rivers and streams that are full of stagnant water and waste that really caught my heart ... the open sewers bubbling and pungent..

I said despairingly to Etienne, my son the biologist ... 'Ghana is just so pollluted!' His answer was swift and brutal: 'It is just as polluted here. We are just more successful at hiding it!'  This brought me up short and made me think..

It is this that lingers ...the idea that  if Ghana, who cannot hide her garbage, has this pollution that in some places looks like a disaster hatching what kind of damage are we as an affluent society with all of our excesses  doing to the world?

In Ghana you go to the market and buy plantains, carrots and mangos that were grown in the next village. You put this in a plastic bag and walk home and prepare the food and eat it. The plastic bag is thrown out! I drive in my large car to a huge supermarket where i buy produce that has been flown in from Australia and China, prepared with preservatives, packaged in plastic and then placed in a cardboard box  ... but hey!  i have my own re-usable shopping bags!!

Seeing the garbage and pollution in Ghana was a reality check. Somehow, somewhere my garbage which is 100x more than the average Ghanian is going somewhere damaging our world....

The water was a dark murky grey and the whole area smelt pungent. Kids were running barefoot along the banks darting in and out... people live and work here ... It was like looking at Hell ... is this where we are heading?