POST by JED: Warning, this post is trashy...

I tell you it’s trash! How do I know? Because I can SMELL it…

Week 2 in our house and we’re confronted with garbage. In the past we had used the house owner’s car to take our rubbish down to a “neighbour´s” house, somewhere along Carretera Veija a Leon, in the middle of the night. “Oooooh you-who!!! Here, have 10 grandiose garbage bags full of carrot peels, used toilet paper, old bits-and-bobs, etc.” I can imagine them marching out their front door the next day with newspaper in one hand, coffee in the other, only to have the smiles wiped off their faces when confronted with Brien Stench… Putrid!

And so now we have just one car, and no tray or trailer to take the rubbish away. We did try, years ago, taking our rubbish to the tip when we had a café in an old Australian town, “Gundaroo”… Those were the days. We worked like dogs, and for little more than the dole would have paid us.

On one occasion we made the mistake of transporting rubbish in our car, and the extent of our mistake was not realised straight away.

It´d been a long day, serving customers, making sure that Franny hadn´t crawled onto the roof, like she did at my mother´s café in Bateman´s Bay. By the end of most days (10am til 10pm) we were crawling ourselves, dragging our limbs from the store to our car, with just enough energy to turn on the beast (an OLD Ford Falcon).

We drove to the tip and made our deposit - bags full of used plastic (which had contained raw meat), milk cartons, egg shells, ground coffee beans, etc. We then drove home and tippy-toed into bed. Oooooh, the delight. Pure ecstasy. Wickedly tantalising crisp linen and fluffed pillows. The beloved cries of our infant Francesca… Ignore it. Roll over... Sleep! It won´t go away!! Get that child and feed, change, burp it NOW!!! (and that was Lizzie giving the orders!)

The next day we awoke and had a leisurely breakfast. We chatted about our service issues and laughed at some of the mistakes we´d made (It was as if we´d worked the café 10 years prior, we were so patronising to ourselves!). We spent an hour having fun and laughing, and a minute getting ready. We popped Fran in the back of the car, and should´ve noticed her gagging, but were in too much of a hurry…

We jumped in the car ourselves and nearly died. The stench of the rubbish that had been in the boot the night prior, was overpowering. We learnt at that very moment never EVER to take rubbish in our car again. However, we were able to relive the moment for the next year and a half (until we sold the car), as the stench never left – no matter how much/hard we cleaned…

And so, without a tray or trailer to carry our rubbish away, what are we to do. Well, we´ll employ somebody to take the rubbish. That was our thought. We asked a young chap, unemployed and with access to a vehicle, to take our misery away. We told him our price, $2.50 for a once-per-week trip. He agreed.

Now this may sound like a measly figure, but we´re living on support from others, and people here will work for $5 a day. We´re on the way from his house to "town", and so it really was just his time and inconvenience to stop, fill the truck and then stop, empty the truck.

The first time he came was fine. He, his wife (15 years old and with a cute little tot on hip) and child stayed and had a swim in our pool. They laughed and played, ate our food and relaxed in our hammocks.

The second time he came, he asked for double the money. Now we´re REALLY stretched and feeling the financial pain of having a mortgage and a ministry that has truly blossomed. Our electricity bill, for instance, is $200 per month. (and that´s even with powercuts half the time) I told him that we couldn´t afford his price, but if he came every second week he could have double the money and only a little more work.

He came again, but 2 weeks later. This time, not happy. “It stinks!” He said in Spanish. “Um, yeah, it´s rubbish and has been sitting in the hot Managua sun for 2 weeks” (Managua is the second hottest capital city in the World, after New Delhi, India). We had a bit of a to-and-fro, but he left still resigned to coming once per fortnight.

Then we hired Yadar. Now Yadar is an exceptional fella. He is fully into God and our Church. He LOVES the Lord, his family and all the good things that this life has to offer. Yadar is willing to work 12 hours per day, 5 days per week, for $100 per month. He is a gift from God and is more like a nephew than an employee. 

Yadar was previously unemployed and is trying to study sociology at university (on Saturdays). He would one day like to work with a program like ours, and he doesn´t know it yet, but he is half of our program, and we will never let him go!

Yadar comes at 6am and rakes the leaves, cleans the pool and mops the “school room” (our verandah). He then slings the gun over his shoulder and welcomes 2 to 8 year olds into our house. He sits with 2 toddlers that cry for most of the day. He serves drinks and meals, washes grubby little faces and shovels horse and dog manure from the lawn. He´s a real servent hearted bloke.

At midday he watches as the children leave and has down-time for an hour or 2. He then gets on with odd jobs, which at the moment, is painting our house (the community centre). We sit and chat in Spanish and he makes fun of me (everything from my Spanish, to the double chin, to my Spanish again… He´s a rotter, but I love him). He then tends to the horses and plays with the kids, all the while answering the gate when visitors come to call (we are now a community centre don´t you know!).

Yadar is meant to finish at 6pm, when the night time guard comes, but always stays on because we have Church and missions related activities, which he just cannot get enough of.

Well, Yadar proclaims that he possesses the solution to our rubbish related issues – he´ll cart it away for us! Now, most of you don´t know this, but rubbish usually ends up in landfill. Where exactly is landfill, I hear you asking, it´s all-over-the-place in Nicaragua!

In fact, one time, I was driving along in our car, with the rubbish on the tray behind, and I stopped for some locals to see if they wanted a lift. Locals in our neck-of-the-woods always accept a free ride. Before I could offer them a seat in my cab they had bounded ONTO the pile of rubbish that was following us. The cries and laughter (Nicas will always have a joke about even the most dire situations – they´re kind of like Pacific Islanders in that respect).

It was funny. I drove a little faster to juggle the repulsivity around just a little more than was necessary – the screams of delight, it was hilarious (the screams of delight were coming from me of course, I´m not sure if they were quite as impressed).     

And so they thumped on the top of the roof. “Stop” they screamed, “stop, stop, stop, stop!” (in Spanish) I did as they commanded. Within 30 seconds the rubbish was gone. Thrown from the car and onto the side of the road. “Yucko” I thought to myself. With a little guilt I drove away.

There´s NO WAY I can do that on a regular basis. The local Nicas are not well off, and they throw very little away. Most things are composted. For us, we seem to throw a great big bag away, EVERY day. (please remember that there are 9 who sleep at our house, and anywhere up to 50-100 through our house during the day) The thing I felt most guilty about was all the plastic. Doesn´t it take like a thousand years for that stuff to decompose?

Well, Yadar had the solution and I was happy to turn a blind eye. However, I didn´t turn that blind eye quite far enough, because low-and-behold, the very next day, I went to the paddock to hang out with our horses, and as I released the latch and walked through the gate, I was confronted with a never-ending field of trash!

Dear, sweet Yadah had taken our refuse and put it 50 metres away on the pile to-be-burnt. This pile, up until now, had been dedicated to dead trees, grass clippings, cardboard boxes and decomposable odds-and-ends. The rubbish had been blown around by the wind, or carried off by the horses. I don´t know how it spread, but it lay like a hideous tablecloth across the entire terrain.

I slammed the gate shut! What was I to do? The paddock was my refuge, my home-away-from-home, the horses´ home, a serene, pristine environment – Devastated… I felt sick, like there had been a massive oil spill on the Great Barrier Reef! I went and retrieved Yadar. I was a wee bit red-faced at this point, but he didn´t catch on.

As we rounded the corner I was shocked by how proud he was of himself, “Isn´t it beautiful?” (more of a proclamation than a question, and in reference to the empty/tidy bins) “Yes, yes, beautiful… But this? (now referencing the littered paddock) What the dickens is this???” He now sensed some tension. “I thought that´s what you wanted, for me to get rid of the rubbish?” (my Spanish isn´t great, so this is what I imagined him to be saying…) “Yes, but over near the community we´re serving, not right under my nose!”

Buh-bow! Interesting. As I said these words I felt more  guilt settle upon my soul. I´m happy to share Jesus and my waste  with these folks whilst keeping my home in complete order, separate from the dear people I have come to serve? My conscience was seared…

Now truly, back in Canberra (Australia), I know that all rubbish goes to Mugga Lane. It´s not beautiful, but it´s barely seen and due to recycling and other phenomenon (I know nothing about), it never seems to grow or change. It´s there, but out of sight.

However, here – in Nicaragua, rubbish is everywhere. I know that there is a municipal tip that most of Managua´s rubbish goes to, but out where we live, it´s very rural. People don´t have the luxury of having rubbish carted away in massive trucks. It´s in your face and for you to deal with.

I am so used to jogging through fire after fire where the main fuel is plastic. It´s awful. Even “Lucky” (our pet dog, who died of a drug overdose), when she died, was hauled off to the side of the road and burnt. We didn´t quite realise what was going to happen. For weeks after the kids eyes would well with tears as we would drive by her “grave” and the stench of smoke would fill our senses.

So what am I to do? I´ve come up with a toot-sweet compromise. We´re going to start composting and worm farming, that´s for sure. It´s different back home. We´d just give some table scraps to the dog and the veggie scraps would go in the compost. We´d separate our cardboard and plastics in the recycling bin and the rest would go off to Muggas (thanks Muggas!). Our waste was compartmentalised.

However, we have to go further here. I do feel a little bit like the alternate type (the Manor Bourne?), but it´s out of necessity. Pretty much we have to be self-sufficient with our waste management. Nearly everything needs to stay “in-house”. Can you imagine? It was hard enough not disposing used toilet paper down the loo (it´s taken me three years to trash it and not flush – sorry to everyone whose drains I´ve blocked… I lied!), let alone somehow disposing of it in the same fields my children are expected to play in.

Is it called enculturation? We need to learn a bit from Yadar about the Nica-way (cause they´ve got BRILLIANT ways of cutting corners), and there´s also an opportunity for us to educate him about how things could alternately be done. 


Our good friend with the ute will probably also come in handy too. It´s about getting into the grind and working out solutions. We are here to serve this community and to bless them, and not to overload them with our trash! Pray for us, this experience is difficult and humbling, but we are growing and making real inroads to our community of the Punta Plancha. Thanks for reading!