Looking down at my happy-to-be-cold-even-for-just-minute hands holding my empty Fanyogo wrapper I know what I have to do. There are no garbage cans to be found at the Tuesday market in Dormaa-Ahenkro, and really, there are no garbage cans, dumpsters, trash buckets, or much less recycling bins in any place in Ghana. So standing at the market with Toni, Dominic, Jonas (AFSers), and Leticia (DVTC student and househelp) I just drop the wrapper on the ground next to a table full of mismatched shoes and keep walking.
Back home in the States I'm normally pretty anti-litterbug, sometimes I'll pick up trash on the ground just because I know I'm heading towards a trash can. Not for any reason other than, that's where trash goes. In Dormaa, every street has garbage lining it's curbs, empty waterbags mix with the dust from the roads and stick to the bottom of pedestrians flip-flops. Trash melts into the mud and makes up pathways leading from water pumps to gatherings of houses.
Yesterday morning something smelt funny, smokey, the straw-house girl in me started panicking about a chimmney fire. But nope, someone was just burning their trash (all of their trash; plastic, paper, food, tin, cans. Glass is sometimes 'returned', don't quite know what that means yet). At my house in Dormaa we have a trash can in the kitchen, which when it's 1/2 way full it's dumped behind our house in a wide, shallow hole with tons of other trash. All leftover food is given to the kitties, Milo and Fufu who eat it in true Ghanian style, fast and are still hungry for more afterwards. I've learned to always cover the food, ants here are speedy and plentifull, or just be quick like the cats.
And little cultural mistake I made: When bringing someone food, especially someone respected, you've got to not only put the food in containers but then put those containers in a bag, or basket. No explanation why really, you just should, or it's considered disrespectful or you'll get teased by your host-dad.
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