Burning Ring of Fire

I had my first experience yesterday of burning the weekly trash in the back yard. In Kenya, the trash from the house was also burned, but usually it was done by someone else (I never figured out who, maybe the girl who cleaned the office?).  Here, it's apparently done every week by the house occupants,which is myself and my roommates.  

In both Kenya and Uganda (and likely many other countries in Africa) burning trash is standard practice. I believe it’s because there is no public waste/sanitation infrastructure here. Houses or compounds, such as ours, typically have a small dirt pit in the back yard where the trash is burned. 

Taking the weekly trash to the back yard to burn

I was surprised that almost everything went into the burn pile, with the exception of food scraps which are put in the compost. There were even cans of Doom (quite an ominous name) which is actually a brand of insecticide spray, like Raid. (I won’t go in to why we had those, but let's just say on my first night here, I could see how it comes in handy…) I asked my roommate if we burned the aerosol Doom cans too, and she said yep. I asked if we had to worry about the fire spreading beyond the pit, and she said nope.

Setting the trash on fire

After she lit fire to the trash in several places, I suggested we move further away from the pile in case the aerosol cans exploded, which they did.  It was not as dramatic as I thought it'd be, more of a small boom, but nevertheless, given the contents, I didn't want to be standing close by breathing it in. 

Burning trash

The trash burning is definitely not a good practice for the environment or human health, but with few other options, I guess there isn't much else people living in these areas can do until the infrastructure is improved and options expanded.