I am so thankful that COVID-19 has not reached Mongu even though there are over 800,000 cases in Africa. I hope it is not that people in Mongu are not able to get tested for what ever reason. Let’s hope it is one of the advantages to living in a remote community and there truly are no cases.
Back in 2017 I tried to show that plastic is not good for the soil, animals or the people living in rural Mongu or the city proper.
Sorry for this horrible picture, but it proves a point and the pictures are not bad in the rest of this post.
They do not have garbage pick up, so most of the items they cannot re use get dumped into a pit in the sandy soil. Not good for leaching into their underground water systems but I can only do so much! The city garbage gets dumped on a corner in town and is picked up randomly.
I learned, while there, that they were lighting their charcoal cooking fires using plastic bags, and there was plastic every where. They often cook in enclosed areas and I told them that they were breathing in toxic chemicals from the plastic bags. Happily, they don’t do that any more!
Things have changed!
I tried to implement a rule that if everyone cleans up a one kilometre stretch of Limulunga Road, it will all stay clean and to keep the areas surrounding their homes plastic and garbage free.
Birds, cattle, goats, dogs and maybe even a few children were eating the plastic. It was embedded in the soil along side their vegetables and with the temperatures of the soil reaching 35 degrees Celsius and above, who knows if it was leaching into their food.
I am so happy that they are keeping there village clean. Thank you to our manager Fredrick for implementing this.
