Day 317 - Where Did All the Garbage Go?

Garbage on the side of the road in Sanaa, 1999

During Alex's and my first trip to Yemen, we were overwhelmed by the sight of garbage on the side of the roads. More than a year passed between that visit and my arrival for my year in Yemen, and one day it struck me that I wasn't bothered by the trash. My first thought was that my brain was playing tricks on me by making what was common - the trash - invisible. Both Alex and I had noticed that phenomenon when we lived in Doha, although it took newcomers to help us realize it.

In Alex's case, the newcomer was the guy brought in from England to take his place. While Alex was driving the guy around the country, the guy kept asking him why there was so much litter on the side of the highway. It wasn't on the same level as in Yemen, but in Qatar people abandoned what they no longer needed by taking it into the desert and leaving it.  Refrigerators, washing machines, tires, and even occasional cars in the desert within eyesight of the highways were so common that after a few months we no longer saw them at all.

Example of the green in the distance
in Qatar that I just didn't see
by  derekbruff 

In my case, the regional medical officer came from Riyadh and I took him to the beach so he could see one of the few sports activities available to expats in the country. In his case, the phenomenon was reversed. He was so used to seeing nothing on the side of the highways that he kept commenting on how green the desert was. When I looked more closely, I did see the few green plants that hugged the desert surface. Later, when I traveled to Riyadh for three weeks of rest to overcome a case of bronchitis that I just couldn't shake in Doha, I understood better. The desert around Riyadh was uniformly brown.

When Gilder came from Bahrain shortly after my arrival, it wasn't her first trip as she had been traveling between Manama and Sanaa for more than a year already. So I asked her how long it took for her to stop seeing the trash. She laughed and responded, "Sandra, there isn't any trash anymore." She had been traveling to Sanaa since before the trash disappeared so she understood my question. But when I looked closer, I saw what she meant. My brain wasn't playing tricks on me. The trash was gone.

Clean streets after September 1999
by  stepnout

The September after our familiarization trip to Sanaa and before my return, Yemen celebrated its tenth anniversary of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) and the Yemeni Arab Republic (North Yemen) uniting as the Republic of Yemen. The then-president Ali Abdullah Saleh had all the streets in Sanaa cleaned in advance of the celebrations. Afterwards, crews of men wearing blue jumpsuits continued to pick up trash from the side of the streets.

The clean-up effort hadn't reached throughout Yemen, however. When we traveled outside Sanaa through villages, the trash was back, much of it having been first stuffed into plastic bags. The goats had no trouble getting into the bags to pick through the delicacies.

Poor goats in Sanaa.