Don't Judge Me 'Cause I'm Trashy

We burn our trash.

When I first got here, the burning of trash was one of the cultural things that bothered me the most. It’s so bad for the environment! It’s so bad for your lungs! I get a horrible headache whenever it’s trash burning day. And until now, I’ve been able to stay fairly judgmental about it through ignorance.

When we lived with a host family, trash wasn’t our responsibility and thus I didn’t have to think about it. Out of sight, out of mind, out of conscience.

In our first home by ourselves we were given two options: pay the trash men 1 manat per pickup (3 manat a month) or sneak across the neighborhood at night to dump the trash in the woods. We nobly chose the expensive route. I felt so environmentalist and smug. Yes, I Emma Jackson, Peace Corps Volunteer, was sacrificing 3 manat a month for my ethics.

A quick note about the trash pickup—There is no trash pickup schedule, no “every Tuesday at 10”. There are no trash bins to be left at the end of your driveway. The way it works is that at three random days and times during the month someone will knock on the door. There will be a big open truck parked on your street and two guys with shovels. You will run inside and collect all the trash you have and hand it to them along with your payment (always in cash). And if no one is at home you ask? Of course there is someone at home, that’s what women are for!

So when we moved here and our landlord told us to burn our trash, we declined and decided we would continue to pay the garbage men instead. We paid them. They never came back. We see them from time to time but they are as elusive as an even-handed comment on Fox News. And so after letting the bags in our kitchen build and build, we have no other option than to dispose of our trash ourselves. And that means burning it or dumping it on someone else’s yard to be torn apart by wild dogs in the night. When we finish burning it, we must then bury it. Otherwise Baby Cat comes inside with her face all black and looking like an extra in Braveheart.

And so I’m a lot less smug these days. And a lot less judgmental of people who really have no viable options. If any of you environmentalist inventors or engineers can come up with a solution, please let me know. Until then:

Recycle all the plastic you can find. Don’t do it for yourself. Do it so that when the fumes of our burning trash reach God’s nose, he’ll balance it out with your recycling indulgences on our behalf and we won’t have to live in the oil baron section when we go to heaven.