What Do You Do For A Living ?

Or What Do You Have To Do To Live ?

There are millions of people in South Africa. women and men, who have made it their living to dig through other people's trash and waste that is deposited in black bags outside on the street for collection. 

It is the same scenario on each and every day in South Africa. In every city and in each suburb, affluent or poor, depending on the week day when the trash is collected.

As early as five or six o'clock in the morning, before the trucks come, people start searching the trash for plastic bottles and material that can be recycled and for things that can be kept for private use. The list of things that can be re-used for private comsumption is long ranging from old garden chairs, left over food and half smoked cigarettes to card board boxes. Nothing is excluded.

South Africa is just beginning to make a small step into the direction of an " organized waste separation and waste managemnt system ". Private Recycling companies buy the empty bottles and plastic trash that are collected by the people who search the waste. 

The money derived from this activity is often their only income.

The gap in South-Africa between the rich and the poor has become deeper during the last decade.

And this is a way not to steel or starve.

What many South Africans have to do to live.

Welcome To Slummies

East London has lately been called Slummies.
The inventor of this name was an un-known graffiti artist who had left his mark in form of a welcome greeting " Welcome To Slummies " on a wall at the entry to East London. This comparison with a slum has upset many residents who love their town dearly. 

The welcome greeting has been removed meanwhile but one can still see where the artist had received his inspiration from.

On a Tuesday at one o' clock in the suburb of Quigney the waste is still out on the streets waiting for the collection trucks to come.

It's not only out but it's all over. Waste removal management poses a big challenge to Buffalo City Municipality. And all suburbs face the same problem that the waste is either too much, collected to late or sometimes not collected at all.

It's business as usual for the hair saloon up the street

Trash piles up on the streets everywhere. Attempts to keep it in plastic bags are scarce. And it does not help much either because dogs ravage through the bags and tear them open in search for something edible before the trucks come.

The residents of Quigney have meanwhile a rat problem. I have seen three of them in half an hour in broad daylight while taking these pictures.
What to do ?

The municipality has problems in solving this situation alone. Residents attempts to do their part are rather scarce as well. Once the trash is out of the house, it's definitely out - it is not an individual responsibility anymore.  But without personal commitment to a waste removal and waste separation system it's going to be a " Warm Welcome to Slummies ".