Mbeubeuss

I just passed one of the most amazing days in Senegal….and I couldn’t take any photos L. In my Environment and Developmnt class we had a couple classes discussing the problem of solid waste disposal in Dakar. You see trash EVERYWHERE for two main reasons (among others) – 1. There’s just the habit of throwing your trash wherever, 2. There just don’t exist many trash receptacles and the trash pick-up service sucks and doesn’t even exist in some neighborhoods. But, what really interested me was learning about Mbeubeuss. That’s the landfill where all the trash from Dakar and its surrounding communes goes. It’s like any other landfill you’d see in the states, except this one has no gates or fences, no bottom liner to keep waste from leaking out, and, people live IN the landfill and make their livings from the trash.
So, I was really interested in learning about these people who live in the dump and the récuperateurs (people who collect trash to re-sell for recycling in places as far away as India or to resell to local artists). Let me preface this by saying that there are so many things that really would never happen back in the US, and the spontaneity of life in Senegal is one of the things I’ll miss most about being here. So, my friend Taryn (one of my best friends here – we enjoy discussing similar things, and our French is at about the same level) and I set out for Mbeubeuss with just 2 names of people who work with the NGO ENDA-Tiers Monde (an international organization that works on various development issues and is really involved in the environment in Senegal) and the name of the President of the Association des Récuperateurs de Mbeubeuss. We took a taxi to the commune of Malika, which is a part of one of the Dakar region’s poorest neighborhoods (and also a hotspot for producing some of Senegal’s biggest rap artists). About 7,000 people live in Malika, right next to the landfill (I really mean right next to. There is the landfill, and then 100 yards away there are houses).
We were dropped off right outside the main entrance into Mbeubeuss, and we could already see, a bit off in the distance, smoke rising from we would find as hundreds of piles of burning trash. We went to the truck weighing station and asked about some of the names we had. We were immediately invited in to the station to talk to the workers there. There, we met Richard, an officer who works on security at Mbeubeuss, which means that he helps weigh and authorize the dumptrucks to dump their wastes. He offered to bring us to the “platform” which is where the trucks all dump their stuff. So, we thought we’d be walking a short ways. No way! We hitched a ride with Richard in the cab of a dump truck going out to dump his trash.
We drove on a giant mountain of trash that’s been piling up since the 1970s. I really won’t be able to describe it well enough. Over a kilometer wide and much longer, the landfill is made of rolling 50-foot (or more) mounds of plastic, metals, glass, and a bunch of random crap that you’d find in any dump. We drove over the compacted trash heaps on a sort of “path”, which is really just a little clearing between the mountains of trash, but still we were just driving on trash. We had to drive almost a kilometer into the dump to the platform to dump the truck. On the way, we saw random people searching through the trash heaps for things to re-sell. Then, we turned a corner around a mound of plastic, and I’ll never forget that site. There were several dump trucks unloading their crap while hundreds of people (about 1/3 were children probably 8-15 years) clamored about trying to be the first to get their hands on the new bags of trash. All over the dump were piles of burning, smoking trash (plastic, paper, etc.) which are used to find iron in the trash heaps. Nobody has any kind of protective gear – people wore t-shirts and sandals (walking through trash full of rusty metal pieces, glass shards, and household waste).
We made our way back after dumping our load. Richard told us that on average people who come to the dump for a living make about $25 dollars a day! That’s a fortune considering like 2/3 of Senegalese live on less than $2/day.
Some people actually live on the dump. We passed by a series of shacks where people sat outside sorting their used goods and others ate lunch. Other people come from the surrounding neighborhoods of Malika and Keur Massar – that’s where most come from. But then there are also others who come from all over the Dakar region – some travel an hour or so every day to get to Mbeubeuss. That’s why it’s such a taboo to take photos at the landfill. Richard told us people get really upset and one of the main reasons is that they don’t want anyone back home to know that they work at the dump. Although you might make a lot money gathering trash, it’s still a job looked down on by Senegalese because of the conditions – it’s smelly, and it’s disgusting.
We got back to the weigh station, and Richard sent us in the direction of the Poste de Santé, a little health center set up by the Association de Récuperateurs de Mbeubeuss with the help of the NGO ENDA. We walked over to the little building and met a cute old man named Moustapha. After chatting a bit (as you always have to do in Senegal – how’s the family, where’s your wife? How’s work? How was your morning? How was your night? Are you in peace?) Moustapha introduced us to the doctor and nurse who treat people at the little clinic. They told us that one of the major health problems they treat is respiratory infections (understandable since the people are breathing in fumes from burning plastic and who knows what). Side note – I read a study done on the neighborhoods surrounding the landfill which said that 14% of the populations have respiratory illness, 10% have parasites, and 66% drink well water polluted by bacteria and heavy metals. Then, the doctor introduced us to Adama Soumaré, the man who works for ENDA at this community center that includes the health clinic and a training center for kids and young adults.
The training center was created to help give the children who work at Mbeubeuss with their parents an opportunity to find a different, healthier line of work. I asked how they get the kids to come to these schooling programs. Soumaré said it happens in several different ways – they go out into the dump and ask the kids themselves (older kids often may not live with their families), they talk to parents who come to the health clinic and see the school in session, and they hold meetings for parents to come learn about the school. Then, there’s a training program for young adults aged 18-20 years for the same reasons. They teach the girls things like embroidery, cooking, French, and computers. They teach boys things like carpentry, metal-working, and mechanics.
To encourage good teachers to come out to the site (right at the entrance of the landfill, for convenience for the families), they encourage parents to give about 1500 CFA a month ($3/month). It was really neat to see things like this in action, with so much grassroots support – most of these activities (health clinic, school, training)were started by the people who work in the landfill themselves, rather than an NGO coming in and doing it. ENDA assisted later on with technical support, but still most of these activities are really community-run, not outside NGO-run, like so many projects I’ve seen in Senegal.
I’ve read about the debate over closing Mbeubeuss and opening a new landfill in another region of Dakar. But, from what I’d heard and read, there was no community that would accept another Mbeubeuss. So, I asked Soumaré about it. He said, in fact, that they’ve already found another place. This was the most interesting part of the day because it involved the World Bank and we got to hear from the people about negotiations with the big shots. So, here’s what went down. Mbeubeuss was created by the Senegalese government in like 1970. Then, in 2006 or 2008 the World Bank financed a large highway going from Dakar toward Pikine (a community on the outskirts of the Dakar area) and past. But, to do this, they had to displace hundreds of people who lived where the highway was to be built. So, they were moved up to one of the neighborhoods by the landfill. But, then the World Bank said the people couldn’t live next to the landfill because of all the air pollution, so they were working to have Mbeubeuss closed. But, that’s a problem for the people who make their livings there – they don’t want to move, and when the next landfill opens, it might have higher regulations so that people can’t go inside. So, people were going back and forth about what to do. Finally, the World Bank and Abdul Azziz (president of the people who work at Mbeubeuss) and the Senegalese government agreed on a compromise. They are going to open a new landfill in Thies, and city east of Dakar. But, first, they will bring the trash to Mbow, which is near Mbeubeuss, and people can go there to collect their goods, and then the trucks will bring the remainder to Thies to be incinerated (I think – it got fuzzy because of French vocab I didn’t know). So, Mbeubeuss will be closed, but the people at Mbeubeuss will still be able to continue their living. I’m not sure of the details of how that will all happen though.
Then, Moustapha took us out into the dump again to meet Abdul Azziz Seck, the president of the Association des Recuperateurs (people working in the dump). We followed Moustapha through piles of sorted plastics, metals, and glass and met dozens of people sitting outside shacks, taking a break from their work and eating lunch. We met Abdul, but he was busy with his family eating lunch, so we didn’t stay long, and he clearly wasn’t in a talking mood. But, he told us that the initial reason he and his buddies wanted to create the association was to fight against delinquency in the landfill. It used to be a major hideout for criminals and gangs, but now the community living and working there has come together to make itself more into a society, rather than just a bunch of individuals making money.
Afterwards, we went back to the weight station to say goodbye to our friend Richard and some other guys who had helped us that morning. And, of course, it always takes forever to say goodbye here. It was lunchtime and they insisted that we stay and eat ceebu jenn with them, of course. But, we needed to get back to Dakar to make an American-style dinner for Taryn’s family. But, then Amadou (the head guy at the weigh station) told us to wait for this truck that had just headed out to dump its load. It was going back to Dakar, and we could ride in it on the way back. So, we waited, and then Richard came back with some ceebu jenn, and so we had to eat. It’s always so funny when you’re a guest because the Senegalese way of showing respect for a guest when you’re eating is to shut you in a room by yourself. It still makes me laugh. So, we finished the ceeb and then jumped up into the cab of another dump truck and hit the road back to Dakar! The looks we got were priceless – 2 tubaab girls riding in a dump truck??? Haha! It was also really cool because the truck was bringing bags of collected trash from peopleat Mebuebeuss back to people in Dakar who re-sell it to industries. So, we got to see the whole recycling process!
So, all in all, this was an incredibly eventful day, and so many things I would never expect to happen in the states. But, maybe being in Senegal will have made me more aggressive in terms of researching things for myself – you know, just really putting yourself out there to try to get info.