Burning your trash is harder than is looks.

One of the things that struck me when I first moved here was the trash. There is a lot of it. And there is no centralized pick-up here, which means, there is no ability to put a plastic bag on the front curb and not worry about it. You cannot forget that it was you, yourself, who just is responsible for the contents of that black drawstring sack.

It doesn’t work like that here. The closest you can get to being irresponsible for what you accumulate is throwing it over a back wall and hoping that no one yells at you in a local language after you hear the thud of the bag hitting the dirt. (This was my philosophy for a while. I wasn’t even sure what was behind my house. Turns out, there is a lot of trash.)

A couple weeks ago, I was not going to be that neighbor anymore. Everyday, I pass small piles of smoking trash on the side of the road, so I figured that I would be able to pull that off as well.

Like many things here, on first try, I was not so good at it. I imagine this would surprise the members of my family who witnessed my early pyromaniac tendencies (see: burnt spot in our basement carpet). I spent my afternoon in my back patio, trying to sustain a small fire that was in danger of going out due to the amount of sweat I was dripping on it.

About an hour, my trash bucket was empty. However, I now suppress the urge to cringe every time that I create a new piece of trash.