Infrastructure part 1, electricity and garbage

In a 2012 interview, the much-revered late Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, proudly spoke of the progress that his government had made: "there is a school in every village and clinics in every village, roads, infrastructure." Indeed, Ethiopia has set an impressive pace for development, which is reflected in the country's progress on the Millennium Development Goals. At the same time, behind any such national average lies a range of "on the ground reality." In the Geography classroom, I try to illustrate this for students with the example of population density, a statistic that misleadingly implies a uniform distribution of population ("like icing on a cake"). National wealth measures are another good example, as they leave out the crucial question of how that wealth is distributed across the population.

In any case, living in a rapidly growing neighborhood on the edge of this rapidly growing city, I am witnessing first-hand the challenges of providing adequate infrastructure. It has been, for example, a week of frequent power outages, including Wednesday when a computer lab-based lesson had to be postponed when the campus lost power just before class. There were also at least three outages  yesterday - all while I was working on the computer preparing class materials! It's been a good chance to practice patience, flexibility, and advanced planning.

A big challenge for both the campus and the neighborhood is trash disposal. Despite the relative proximity of a landfill (about 4 kilometers away), a striking amount of garbage gets tossed by the side of the streets and into open areas. Much of this trash is food waste, which attracts vultures and dogs by day - and, by night, hyenas from the nearby forested hills. A lot of it is plastic, especially bottles and bags, and it is common to come across piles of this trash being burned in an open area or by the side of the road. Some of it does get hauled away, and there are often people picking through the trash piles for anything that might still be of use or value, but much of it just spreads out and slowly becomes part of the surrounding dirt and vegetation.  
 
On the college campus, there is no city trash service (because it is combined with water service, and the college has its own well). At first, rubbish was just piled in an open area on campus. Once that was deemed too unsightly, the facilities staff resorted to either burning it or tossing it over the fence into the adjacent fields. More recently, an Environmental Science teacher and a group of students (the aptly-named Positivist and Visionary Club) set up a collection system that separates garbage from recycling. The next step is arranging for the collected waste to be hauled away. Another promising sign is the development of a composting area. Besides reducing the volume of garbage that needs to be hauled away, there is a productive school garden that will make good use of the decomposed food scraps. 

The campus waste disposal station.

To raise awareness and to help fund this modest infrastructure, a group of us have planned a 5km fun run for next weekend. In consultation with students and administrators, I designed t-shirts for the run, and all the proceeds from shirt sales will go toward offsetting the waste disposal costs. We sold out of the first order of 60 shirts in one hour yesterday! After some quick negotiations, the administration agreed to fund a second order. The enthusiasm is promising. Although it might be better if, instead of running, we all just walk the route and pick up trash as we go. (But then, where would we put it...?) One step at a time.

Coming soon: more infrastructure, housing and roads.        

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