Recycle.

Today was another fairly light day. Didn’t do much but clean the apartment and wash come more clothes. Thought about doing the floors, but I’m not particularly interested in scrubbing on my hands and knees. From what I can tell that appears to be the only way to do the floors around here.

What’s wrong with mops, or some type of scrubbing utensil that can get the job done without having to kill your back?

As I sat and pondered today, I began wondering how it is that we in the west produce so much waste. If you think about it, we’ve gotta have something for every task or opportunity we encounter. We manufacture our foods and decorate them with “pretty” packages. We produce various items that can be used for everyday tasks and place them inside neat little wrappers. We even slaughter and prepare our meats and place them inside half-way decent looking packages to be sold in the supermarkets.

But when I go to the market here in Foumban, there are very few “glitzy” packages. When we purchase bread, there is no pre-cut loaf inside of a colorful plastic bag with a wrapper tied on it. Nope. Buy bread here and you better hope the person is using today’s clean newspaper to wrap the loaf, as opposed to some old dusty paper found in a stack at home.

Yes newspaper, imagine going shopping, purchasing a loaf of bread, and the salesperson rips off a piece of newspaper just large enough to wrap around the bread for you to carry home. The only good thing about it is that you know the bread is no older than a day or two, so freshness is almost guaranteed (if there is such a thing here.)

Or what about purchasing eggs. There’s no such thing as a “carton” to carry the eggs home in. Better know how to hold that flimsy little plastic bag so you don’t break any. Not to mention, you better rinse them when you get home. Sometimes they appear to have just been taken from under the chicken.

Then there’s buying beverages. There’s no recognized recycling system going on in this country, but if you look at how the people here live, you realize, it is an informal system. If you go to a boulangerie or bar to purchase a beverage, nine times out of ten you’ll be drinking it there for a cost of about 300 CFAs or so.

However, if you want one of those nice liter and a half plastic bottles to take home, plan on dropping at least 750 CFAs! For the longest I couldn’t figure out the disparity in the pricing, until one day I realized what the Brasseries trucks were do each day.

First off, the Brasseries is the “brewery” that sells most of the beer and beverages like coke, toporange, topanana, topamplemousse and a few other drinks. Ironically, a European gentleman named Castel owns about forty-five percent of it. (Yeah, the one with the beer named after him.) Various individuals or independent groups, including sixteen percent being owned by the Cameroonian government, own the remaining fifty-five percent.

Anyway, each day the Brasseries trucks go to the various townships to deliver the new shipment of beverages. However, in doing so, they also pick up the crates and crates of empty bottles from each of the vendors. In other words, if you drink your beverage on the spot, you receive a discounted price and the bottle remains with the establishment.

If you decide to take it with you, most likely you’ll be charged an additional 50 or 100 CFAs and sent on your way. From what I can tell the reason is because you’re then able to take that bottle and sell it to another vendor. Unless of course you’ve got the kind of relationship with the store owner/employee to allow you to take the beverage at the drink-in price, and bring it back in a day or two. (That’s what the gentleman at the boulangerie does for Akilah and me.)

So if we’re so developed in the west, why can’t we live simply? Why do we have so much invested in presentation and the “pomp and circumstance” of things? Does it all really matter? If you think about it, we actually pay the cost of those pretty little packages twice. We pay for their production and use (since the manufacturer passes the cost onto us) then we pay again when we have to expend various resources to clean the environment from our unsightly trash disposal or the unforeseen affects on the ozone layer.

One way or another, we’re paying for it. Is it even possible for us to reverse our trends and actions? Or are we looking at such an effort with rose colored shades?