The Importance of the Dustbin

A Student from Kenya Discusses Pollution and Drought Back Home

By Jillian Marchetti

As students bustled past getting to class, Nzilani and I sat in our unconventional meeting place, an empty classroom with broken lights. Originally from Kenya, where she lived her whole life, Nzilani is an international student here at Salem State University. She has been residing in Wakefield with her brother, who also attended Salem State, since last August. She came to Salem State University as a communications major, but after a project in her first semester -- where she found out that the medical field is always hiring, and that those jobs are highly marketable, she is changing her studies to nursing. I was interested to hear about Nzilani and her environmental awareness of her home country, Kenya. We eased our way into a conversation.

Q: When did you become aware of climate change back home in Kenya?

A: Not early, because in my country there are a lot of things that are going on, people cutting down trees, people throwing out things, papers, bottles everywhere. And like, industrial waste going into the rivers. The weather has really, really changed overtimes. So it just happened like in maybe the last five years or six years is when the climate has just become so harsh.

Q: And is that when you really started hearing about Climate change?

A: Yes.

Q: Were you taught about it (climate change) in school or was it just the environment around

you?

A: It was just like the environmental thing and everyone was wondering… we have seasons, with long rain and short rain that happen. When it's time for the long rains… they are taking longer to come and now people don’t even know what time to plant and what time to harvest with all those changes. It just came up and everyone started talking about global changes, and global warming, and all that around me.

Q: You asked me to read up on the Nairobi River and the mass pollution that runs into it because of the cities that are settling around it and industrial waste, and this is their bathing water, their cleaning water. But these large industries are being shut down to prevent the industrial waste from flowing into the rivers, what do you think about these efforts?

A: Sadly, they just did that… it is kind of like a show. They say they are working on it but behind it all, someone is just going to pay something small to let them reopen the companies. We have the national environmental management association, they will just write and sign a statement and then the companies will get to open again.

Q: What would you like to see happen in your country to fix these problems?

A: In my country...I want to see more individuals plant trees… I saw one woman who is planting twenty trees for her birthday coming up. I want people to be more aware of waste disposal. We used to have dustbins in our cars to throw away your cans if you drank soda, but then the dustbin era ended and everyone just takes the soda bottles and throws it on the ground again. I wish they would aggressively talk about the effects of these things, and have dustbins on the roads. Sometimes, you can walk for so long without finding a dustbin on the road, so they throw the trash on the road. People don’t care.

Q: Have you felt that you made changes in your lifestyle to help with climate change effects?

A: I never throw anything out of the window. I will hold onto my trash until I get to a place I can find a dustbin to trash them, and I have planted trees even at home.

Related Stories: