The $10,000 Burn

In Nicaragua, trash burning is a common sight and smell. Although it is illegal according to Nicaraguan law, I've never seen it enforced and few people are aware of its consequences on personal and environmental health. In many cases, people burn their trash in rural areas because there is no garbage pick-up. However, even in more urban areas where there is a weekly trash pick-up organized by the municipality, many people will still burn because, as a society that's obsessive about cleanliness, having trash lying around for a week is not what your average household will tolerate.

Ever since I've come to my site, one of the things I've wanted to work on was eliminating trash burning. I thought, how could I, as an environmental education volunteer, leave Nicaragua after two years and allow trash burning to continue in my community? Well, as it turns out, it's really not that simple. It takes a lot of coordination with people who are willing to fight for this cause, and I'm not quite sure environmental health is among what the community feels as one of its top needs. It's one of my personal "reach" goals, but something I feel would really leave a powerful mark.

So, throughout my time working in the schools, I figured I could at least leave my mark at these three locations and eliminate trash burning there. In my rural schools, I promoted burying or making compost over burning trash, since there is no trash pick-up. In the urban school, I talked to the school principal and recommended that he collect sacks from the students to deposit the week's garbage instead of burning it right on school grounds where kids are running and playing (literally). The immediate responses I received were, "Yes", "Absolutely", "We'll start right away", among other promising remarks. But with the potent smell of carcinogenic burning plastic in the air, I quickly learned that these things were still going on behind my back.

Fast forward towards the end of the school year, around September. I've been making countless trips to the local mayor's office, trying to coordinate some kind of action with the environmental representative, Jaqueline. She agrees with me 100%, but putting words into action has always been a difficult task. So when early October rolled around and I got a visit from a new environmental ed trainee, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and come up with some activities for us that would make her visit a little more worthwhile. We made a trip to the Mayor's Office and after waiting around and twiddling our thumbs for an hour until the electricity came back, we finally sat down with Jaqueline to write a letter.

The letter was addressed to the Director of the Ministry of Education (MINED) in my municipality. In summary, it talked about how trash burning is illegal, how it is a huge environmental health problem, and how fines are between $5,000-$10,000 (believe it or not). We also mentioned that schools, as centers of learning, should act as role models to its students and be setting a good example by depositing garbage in a legal and safe manner. We both signed the letter, and most importantly, got the John Hancock of the Mayor. High fives were given all around, the letter was dropped off at MINED, and we hoped for a positive response.

Well, October came and went. So did November. And December. The smell of burning trash continued to greet me day after day at dusk as I made my way back home from class. By the time January came, I had pretty much given up hope. I hadn't heard from the MINED Director and had become so frustrated with trying to meet with him to talk about it because he virtually could never be found in his office.

Finally, after literally trying to track him down for days with Jaqueline, because, being almost the beginning of the new school year it was the perfect opportunity to bring up the issue again, I finally found him at a meeting and pulled him aside. He told me he never got the letter and wanted to see a new copy. I'm not quite sure if this was the truth or if he was too embarrassed that nothing was done about it, but another copy was promptly delivered and we hoped for a response.

The last week of January finally came and end-of-the-month teacher meetings were taking place. Despite the complete boredom and uselessness I feel at these meetings, I went just in case anything important was discussed. Well, something important was discussed. The section-head of our meeting started to read, word for word, my letter, quoting the law about trash burning having up to a $10,000 fine and how the educational community can do better than that. We couldn't have worded it more perfectly. Hearing those words literally brought tears to my eyes. Could it be that something I had started months ago and had virtually been pushed aside really be happening?

The answer was yes. And since that meeting, teachers have been mentioning the letter to me, unaware that I had a hand in writing it, and how they need to look for alternatives to burning trash at the schools. The Director is mandating that teachers look for a better option. Right now, we are dealing with all of the logistics of trash pick-up and burying vs. burning, but overall, I can smell the progress, instead of trash, in the air.

Very few times in my service have I actually felt something this rewarding that makes me feel like, wow, maybe I can and really am making a difference. We, as education volunteers, are only exposed to the frustrations of daily classroom interactions, whether it be student behavioral issues or vegetables getting robbed from our school gardens, and rarely will see the fruits of our labor. So to have something like this happen is a very big deal, and just motivates me even more to see if I can make this a city-wide policy (that's actually enforced). I may be losing Jaqueline from the Mayor's Office due to budget cuts, but if I can get a solid and passionate eco-group together from one of the local high schools, and we can go door-to-door doing an awareness campaign and take it all the way back up to the Mayor, I think we can make this happen.