Tunis: 1st impressions….hot, beautiful, ancient….and dirty.
Between the bustle of the Medina, the rocky remains of Carthage and the white-washed walls and crisp blue sea views of Sidi Bou Sa’id lie fields, highway divides and alleyways of litter.
While the omnipresence of trash and it’s accompanying odor, flies and wild dogs are something you quickly become accustomed to and learn to look past, it is hard not to think about how much more lovely this city could be without it.
Why, I asked myself, can people not find a better way to get rid of their trash? Don’t they care about their city? An editorial in a local French language paper echoed my thoughts and reported the shame of having to apologize to visitors for the state of their public spaces; asking them to look past the litter to find the beauty of their country.
As a scrupulous sorter of my trash, compost and recycling back home, it was a shock to the system to see all manner of glass, plastic, paper and vegetation strewn willy-nilly along the road leading up to our beautifully maintained and manicured Embassy home. I reduce, reuse and recycle! I care about the the future of the planet my kids will inherit! I could never do such a thing…
And then it came time to dispose of our own garbage.
After a good faith effort to find the proper means of disposal (a thorough search of our premises for bins, asking new friends, inquiring of housing authorities) we got the closest thing to an answer from our new neighbors: there USED TO BE a garbage truck that came to our street, he told us with a shrug. Left unspoken behind that USED TO BE was that the truck, along with the street cleaners, had disappeared around the same time as Tunisia’s recently deposed dictator, Ben Ali.
The sad fact of corrupt regimes is that they are often ruthlessly efficient. Not only at control and intimidation but also at municipal services.
So as Tunisia struggles to find it’s footing after 20 years of stable, albeit authoritarian rule, the niceties and practicalities of a functioning government fall by the way side.
(An ironic side note to this trash battle is that cleaner streets were a pet-project of Ben Ali’s wife, Tunisia’s former first lady Leila Trabelssi, and a prime target of revolutionary hatred due to her reportedly extravagant lifestyle and corrupt family tree.)
Trabelssi’s efforts included a cartoon desert fox or fennec (think a la Smokey the Bear) whose statues were stationed around Tunis to urge citizens to avoid littering. They still stand around the city, covered in graffiti and often surrounded by strategically placed trash heaps as very clear indictment of Trabelssi’s campaign.
This nation has challenges both large and small for its people to confront and I am eager to witness them doing it. But in the meantime, I am still a woman with a festering bag of dirty diapers on my hands and no means of disposal apparent besides the overflowing dumpster in the litter-strewn field on the outskirts of my neighborhood.
So it was in desperation last week and with a healthy dose of self loathing that I added my bags to the pile.
As I drive by days later, I can still pick out the distinct color of the Stop and Shop plastic bag I still had from the US as it adds to the disfigurement of my new home and I roll up the windows to mask the smell of it in the Tunisian heat.
This is an original blog post for World Moms Blog by Natalia Rankine-Galloway
The images used in this post were taken by Cinto2 and Drew Avery. They are both from Flickr Creative Commons and carry attribution licenses.
Dear Natalia, I so hear you! Firstly, thank you for this post. Unfortunately to “outsiders” it’s so easy to judge a population as being lazy or dirty. Few tourists will ever know what you have discovered and shared with us … that we ALL want to do the “right thing” but sometimes that’s just logistically impossible!
I live in Cape Town, South Africa, and certain areas of our beautiful city are also “neglected” to put it mildly! Ironically “service delivery” (the lack thereof) is the new “battle cry” of protesting masses! Yes, our municipal services were more efficient, and our streets cleaner prior to 1994! To me, this is just one more example of how people are the same wherever you go!
Parents who are authoritarian – who rule with an iron fist – might have well-behaved kids (who are afraid of them) but I can guarantee, those same kids will rebel the first chance they get, and do the opposite of what their parents demanded!
I think the same is true of “recently liberated” communities. We probably need to wait another couple of generations of “free” citizens to come and go before they “grow up” enough to realize that not EVERYTHING the previous regime did was bad!
Thanks Simona! Interesting to know the same problems exist in South Africa. I only hope that you are right! Especially in view of everything that has happened in the past week, you are right on the money – not everything the old regime did was bad!
Wow Natalia! I have visited cities and places in similar trash heaps. I had been the tourist walking down the street asking myself why see people didn’t care more about their city. Heck, I grew up in NYC and saw this amazing city at it’s worse! Maybe it will take a little time, but poeple can’t live in a trash heap like Oscar the Grouch. They will eventually come around, and clean it up. Maybe you can start to rally the neighbors, or start a petition? You could make it a pet project of yours, starting with your street or neighborhood…maybe.
Meanwhile, unfortunately, you are stuck with what you’ve got. Composting (and perhaps cloth diapers) will help eliminate some of the waste that you add to the pile. Good luck!
Thanks! Thats not a bad idea. I hope if I get back to Tunis (was evacuated after last week’s unrest) that I can do my part!
I would love to visit Tunisia someday. I went to Morocco two years back on a volunteer trip and spent time living in France where I met many Tunisians. Too bad about the garbage. It is insane in parts of India too as well as Nepal. I’d see lines and lines of garbage stacked up along the sidewalks and filling the rivers.
I hope you do visit! It really is lovely inspite of the garbage and last weeks events!
I can see my own country in your post. Jakarta have poor waste managements and sadly people still prefer to throw their garbage out on sidewalks, outside their car etc. This is why I’m so strict with my son about not littering. At least I can make a small change in my house (or car) 😀 Great post, Natalia.
Thats all you can do sometimes! Glad you liked the post!
Natalia,
Thank you for opening our eyes to your experiences. Yes, I take trash disposal for granted, here, in the US. I have never been in that situation, and I wouldn’t know what to do either! I look forward to reading more about your experiences abroad!
Jen 🙂