Stealing from movies...

I got up the other morning, and was immediately aware of a smell to which I am becoming more accustomed. I thought to myself, "I love the smell of burning garbage in the morning." Yes, the method of disposing of most unwanted material here is to burn it. Paper, plastic, paint containers, brush, etc. There seem to be predetermined burning locations, and no one watches the fires. Maybe it is because they are so good at setting them that they know that they will not rage out of control. Did I mention that these fires often take place in areas where there is a lot of brush, both cut down and still growing? I sometimes imagine that I will find my home surrounded by a blaze a la a California wildfire.

Additionally, I watched "Blood Diamond" the other night. Leonardo DiCaprio's character, who identifies himself as Rhodesian, has a phrase he uses in the movie several times: TIA which stands for This Is Africa. In other words, stuff happens that cannot be changed, or explained, or potentially understood. I have repeated this in my head several times since I saw the movie. But then I got to wondering - does acceptance of a problem lead to its continuation? If no one complains, is there no incentive for problems to be fixed? For example, my power was off most of the day this past Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. And my water has been off almost continuously since Saturday (today is Friday, and the water was running when I left home). If I were in the States, I would have called my landlord on Saturday to report this dual outage. And continued to call the appropriate parties if it had continued - the power company, the water/sewer company, etc. Here, I do nothing. I do nothing except hope the power comes on before it gets dark out, hope that the water comes back on before my two reserve barrels are empty, postpone laundry until the water comes back on...I call no one, I complain to no one in authority. Neither do the people here. One housemistress (in charge of a dorm on campus) had a bore hole (well) dug on the grounds of the house she oversees to ensure that they have water even when it is not running. People take available plastic containers and head to a polytank (large black plastic holding tank that collects rainwater) or a bore hole to fetch water for cooking, bathing, laundry, etc.

I asked one of my students about this the other day. She said one area of Ghana had no running water for a year, even though they had the pipes for it, and it had run previously. There were riots, which were broken up by police and nothing changed. If you complain, the government might send someone to beat you up, she said. So people don't complain, they just deal. TIA.