Tuesday, December 08, 2009

A head scratcher

No, I don't have lice. Well, not yet at least.

Many times in Ecuadorian society, I have found myself speechless in response to certain actions or comments.

I had one of those yesterday in my living room.

I had some of the kids from the newspaper over to my house to celebrate the launch of their second edition.

By "celebrate the launch," I also mean "fold" because our newspapers don't come pre-folded. Part of the festivities involved baking oatmeal raising cookies and the other part involved folding 1500 copies of the newspaper. But since the folding takes more than the half hour it takes to make the cookies, one must provide some snacks throughout the afternoon.

I got them some plums and chocolate-covered bananas. They were delicious. Then, they finished eating and faced the question: what should I do with my garbage?

(Prepare to scratch your head)

There are a few options they could have opted for here.

• One would have been taking their waste and putting in the garbage bag in my kitchen.
• Another could have been throwing the pits into my neighbor's chicken yard.
• Another would have been to put the organic waste in the compost pile.
• Another would have been wrapping the garbage in a some newspaper paper and lighting it on fire.
• One more would be to take the pits and sticks and throw them on my floor.

There are probably a few other things they could have done with their waste, but these are the primary options that I can think of.

What do you think they chose to do?

Well, if you chose "turn my living room into a landfill," then you should get some sort of prize.

They just decided to drop their waste on my floor, which meant that the neighborhood ants and cockroaches were attracted by the fresh food and made for a horrible situation.

(Scratch your head and think)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Really? Really?

Do their houses look like landfills also?

Did maestro Yoni take this as a teaching/learning opportunity?

Didn't their madres teach them better?

grossed-out in Franklin

Mat Anonymous said...

Ha!

Unknown said...

i'm pretty sure this is what Ben spent his year in The Marshal Islands teaching; how to put your garbage into the garbage can.
if i remember correctly, they were starting to get the gist of it when he left.
i'd say, stick with the recycling program, especially now that you've created a monthly newspaper.