separating

Written October 6^th

After planting more seeds with the big girls, I spent the afternoon picking up trash from around the property. It must be that trash is just part of life here because there was a lot of it just lying around on the bare soil and even on the concrete sidewalk just outside the house, and nobody else seemed to mind at all. When I had my first handful of Barbie arms and plastic hair decorations and candy wrappers, one of the younger girls asked me, “Margot, is that going to be for the compost?” Slightly shocked inside and almost offended, I kept my cool. “No, I said, this is trash. This does not degrade. This does not ‘undo itself’.” I looked for a better way to explain it in my limited Spanish because at this point a crowd of girls were paying attention. “Look,” I explained “what comes from nature goes back into nature. These wrappers, these plastic things came from the store, and before that from the factory. They did not come from mother earth, so we cannot put them back in.” I wasn’t entirely telling the truth. At some point the petroleum to make the plastic to make those things came from the earth but I had to get them to see the difference somehow. Separating compost from trash and recycling has become so second nature for me that it’s actually a struggle for me to put myself in the shoes of someone who sees all of it as trash, someone who has no idea what the difference between plastic and leftover food is. And it’s not just the little girls. The other day I bought a second trash can for the kitchen so that whoever was cooking would separate the trash from the compost. The first day of it went great. I was cooking that day with the help of Mami, the 28-year-old cook, and she was diligent about separating. At one point she came to me with a handful of plastic wrappers and asked if that went in too. I said “No. All plastic goes in the trash.” Hopefully by tomorrow William will bring the rest of the sticks and finish the compost. It was started so quickly and I got my hopes up, now it seems like it’s taking forever to finish it. I think once everyone sees the process of composting and gets involved in it they’ll start to get it. I even made a sign with two columns one for “Si” and a list of what can go in and a column for “No” with a list of what cannot go in. I wrote plastic on the no side and I have no idea if it will eventually be set in their minds or not. This evening after all that cleaning up and lecturing the girls about not throwing trash in the yard there was a cookie wrapper on the path up to the back door of the house. I think it’s going to take more than a few lectures. Good thing I still have two months here. Making the garden was the easy part. Encouraging people to change their habits is a whole different thing. I certainly have my work cut out for me.