Quality junk

Junk is a hot issue these days in Nicaragua.
Not because there is junk at home, in the streets, and on empty lots. That’s nothing new. Nicaraguans have acquired the extremely bad habit of dumping junk wherever they consider it convenient. It is not yet a dirty country… but we are getting there bit by bit. Wonder what a bit of environmental education could do?
Anyway, the junk on the streets is not the issue at debate these days. We’ve sort of gotten used to that. The issue at debate is the blockade of the local junkyard, carried out by some thousand persons literally living on – and living off – the leftovers from the richer parts of Managua. For some weeks, the churequeros have been blocking the garbage trucks’ access to the junkyard, because they are dissatisfied with the quality of the junk dumped at the site. They want quality junk…
So junk is piling up all over Managua, and with an average daytime temperature of some 35 degrees Celsius, you may imagine the consequences. The mayor has found a temporary solution, sending truckloads of junk to nearby junkyards in surrounding suburbs, but everybody agrees that it is an unsustainable situation.
So what to do? The churequeros want recyclable junk like metal, plastic, and paper, but they claim that the city council employees working on the garbage trucks separate the garbage when they collect it, thus impeding that the ‘good’ junk reaches the junkyard. The city council employees maintain silence, their pay is so lousy that they too feel the need to take a peek into the collected junk and grab the best pieces.
So now the wise heads in the city council have come up with a solution. They want to raise the city council employees’ salary, so that they supposedly won’t classify the junk en route and thus assure the churequeros their share of the quality junk. The mayor believes it is a junky solution. First of all, he doesn’t have the money; secondly, everybody knows it won’t happen.
And as we are in Nicaragua, the land of eternal repairs and ad hoc solutions, nobody has asked the reasonable question whether we shouldn’t rather do something to improve the lives of the thousand families living at the junkyard. Get them out of the deplorable situation they are living in, and offer them real, paid jobs. Maybe they could even classify the junk under more humane conditions, paid by the municipality, who knows?
For many reasons I am happy not to be the mayor of Managua these days. The whole case stinks...

Posted by Christian Korsgaard (photo by Erika Brenner)