And When the River Sounds…

The popular saying hammers into my neighbors’ visual field, but when the river sounds, it doesn’t always carry stones.

In the Reynold García neighborhood of the city of Matanzas, it sounds with the waste carried by the current, mainly when it rains. On 139 B Street, between 146 and 148, a garbage dump was born.

Right at that spot, almost an entire block is a «river» of multiple waste. And I know that the fuel shortage complicates the collection of solid waste — we all understand that, but understanding is not resigning oneself.

According to the neighbors, trucks and loaders from different companies used to pass by. For months the garbage has been growing and blocks the passage of vehicles on one of the neighborhood’s busiest streets; the bad smell reaches the homes, and so does the risk of diseases and epidemics, especially in times of heat and rain.

One detail that worries more: a few meters from the dump there is a junior high school. Every morning the adolescents pass by that point, breathing the smell and dodging the waste.

Several families also live there — children, the elderly, people who cannot move away or look the other way.

And when it rains, because the place is at the top of a hill, the garbage slides down the street, leaving dirt and danger in its wake.

It is not about looking for culprits or criticizing anyone; it is about finding ways out. Maybe the solution does not lie in a truck; perhaps it lies in animal traction, in carts and tractors with trailers, which in other communities help move the waste to collection points.

It also lies in a collective cleanup with the neighbors, the Communal Services workers, and the neighborhood organizations — a Saturday of volunteer work that gives the street back to the people.

And in defining with the People’s Council a schedule and a collection route, even if only from time to time, so that the garbage does not pile up to the impossible.

It lies, too, in everyone’s responsibility, because if the dump grows, in part, due to the neighbors’ actions, it can also stop growing thanks to them.