Dumpster Diving Ugandan style

The idea for this topic has been rattling around in my head for a while but yesterday I saw something that tipped me over the edge and hence this post. 

There is a big old nasty dumpster near my house that "collects" garbage but there is no city garbage collectors so no one ever empties the dumpster.  It is just a huge foul smelling pile of refuse and people keep putting stuff in it even though it most likely will NEVER be emptied.  It is beyond overflowing and the trash is at least 3 feet deep in a 3 foot radius around the dumpster.  A few months back I saw two dead baby goats in the dumpster just to describe how nasty this pile of trash is.

Chickens looking for breakfast

All the time I see animals eating out of it. First thing in the morning are the chickens and turkey. Later in the day it is the goats mostly but occasionally sheep and once I saw a cow.  For a while there was always a whole family of little ducks but I haven't seen them in a while. Probably died of toxic poisoning.  

Worse, daily I see people rooting through it. Now, my neighborhood is poor (along with the entire rest of the country) but not THAT poor. My mom made the joke that it is not a trash heap it is a recycling center and initially it was funny. My trash is your treasure right?  But the more I ponder this the more I get angry. There is NOTHING eatable in there- no one throws away food here. Nothing wearable- they wear things until they are literally rags. Nothing usable.  What are they looking for?!? In the slim, off chance, that potentially they find something that someone (accidentally?) threw away that could still maybe be used, they have exposed themselves to all sorts of nastiness in the process.  Because I have not yet gotten to why I'm writing- yesterday I saw someone tearing open a red bio hazard bag to see what was inside. 

Now I've been in this country a while now, in hospitals and clinics, both government and private and have never seen a biohaz bag being used.  Ever. But I did see them here on the news when Ebola was confirmed and again this month when Marburg disease killed 9 people. Now, I think the likelihood that something in that bag was actually as labeled is practically nil and I'm sure that is what this individual was thinking BUT IS THAT A RISK YOU ARE WILLING TO TAKE?!?!

 Let's say someone finds batteries that are nearly dead but not quite so they got a couple of uses out of their flashlight. And then spent two months suffering from the diarrheal diseases obtained from standing this nasty refuse pile. 

Or save some time by not taking their animals out another half mile to real grass and instead let them eat out of the dumpster and suffer for the rest of their lives from the liver parasites they will get from eating the infected animal. The medical nastiness could go on but I'll leave it at that. 

Some might try to defend my neighbors by saying they don't know. But even if they don't know the name of "Echinococcus Multilocularis" or how it will affect the body, what thought process has to go on to allow digging through this trash heap to seem like a good idea?

OK- I'm done ranting for tonight. Have a good day.