One thing that living here has shown me is how very wasteful we are in the west. Nothing ever gets scrapped here before it's recycled many times over. If one person has finished with something, be it household waste, building waste, old clothes, broken electrical goods.... anything at all, it is left out on the footpath and by the next day someone has come by and taken it away... usually to be repaired or re-used. Each morning peddlers cycle by hawking for old clothes, cardboard, plastic bottles...each one collects a different thing. Then they take it to a collection point.
Cardboard recyclers
I shudder when I think of how much perfectly good / repairable stuff ends up at the dump at home simply because someone doesn't need it any more. That would never happen in a poor country. The old adage necessity is the mother of invention certainly applies here. When a repairman came to fix my air-conditioner, I was stunned to see into his toolbox... a few old tools, some rusty old bolts and screws and a few tired looking bits and pieces... but he fixed the air-con all the same!
Because so many of the buildings here are accessed via winding little lane-ways, building materials are rarely delivered by truck. It's usually delivered by someone on a motorbike pulling a trailer, or even on a modified pushbike:
We also get these sturdy little pony carts. .. that's a heavy load of bricks...
but it's the only way to deliver building materials to sites down the back lanes and alleys
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