Trash and treasure

Strange the variety of movies and books whose images sometimes come to mind when looking at Malawi: The Terminator, The Postman, District 9. None of them are flattering comparisons, but their dusty shots of worn machines and people resemble this place. The Road, a post-apocalyptic novel by Cormac McCarthy, also brings Malawian villagers to mind, not so much for its ashen world and life but for the resourcefulness of its characters. At one point in the novel, the protagonist goes through an abandoned gas station. He produces a half-quart of oil, useful for burning a hurricane lamp, from the dregs of several “empty” oil jugs thrown in the trash. He uses a spent pipe to repair a wheel. This trash-to-treasure mentality, so strange to Americans and westerners generally, permeates village life.

Rural Malawians have an incredible skill at hording spent goods—tires, plastic bags, bits of wire, bottles, jugs—and finding a use for them. When separated into their various layers, tires become bungees for strapping down transported goods, small ties for staking vines and tomatoes, and even shoes. Wire and plastic bags fix anything: broken fuel hoses, questionable door handles. Children use old bottles and a simple pump to create water guns. They take bits of wire and make elaborate toy cars whose wheels move by twisting a handle made of sticks.

It took time for me to see the sense of hording or, better put, making use of resources. After a bike tube of mine went to shreds some time ago, a student asked to have it and, wondering what possible use he could have for it, I thought to keep it and see. I learned shortly afterward to patch punctured tubes with it. The same tube bundled goods to my bike rack and eventually held together a split front tire. I began picking up junk around the village. A rusted metal basin here, a broken basket there, torn sacks. When the bottom to my charcoal cooker broke, I snip and hammered the metal basin, using the pieces to resurrect my simple stove. Two broken plastic buckets and a reed basket without a bottom now display a thriving vine on my front porch. My neighbors smile at what they believe is an oddly un-western habit: valuing rubbish.

Still, though, I fail to save everything. Some mornings I hear quiet voices outside my house, and when I open the back door, a couple women or kids’ heads bob happily above my trash pit. They take my old cartons, once holding powdered milk or cookies, my empty plastic peanut butter and honey jars. They also get a thrill out of the New York Times, I think for the photos. When I go to burn the trash, I rarely find much to burn apart from a few small plastic jars that once held rosemary or dried garlic, useless even to the most resourceful.

I imagine some readers appreciate the impulse of Malawi’s people to reuse, but this inclination stems from the force of necessity rather than any political or environmental awareness. Villagers cannot always afford a new basket, a few meters of wire, or a bicycle tube (a modest $3 USD). A passage of McCarthy’s speaks to the life many here face: “No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later.” For some, but certainly not all, life is a day-to-day affair as they search their gardens and the bush for edible greens and happily buy soap or clothes when money, for whatever reason, happens into their hands. They cannot, as many westerners can, afford the luxury of environmental values. I will take another step: Some Malawians can hardly afford to act on values at all. They rely on the whim of a day.