Friday 15 October 2010

A very bad habit

We all have bad habits. The Jordanians street cleaners have one that really annoys me. Actually no, it scares me. Let me explain.

We have a clear land on the other side of the street. All the Egyptians (read the guys looking after the buildings) up and down the street put all type of stuff there: dead leafs, cut grass... Others stop with garbage as well, but it's not too bad really. But once in a while comes a guy from Amman Municipality, starts to clean whatever there is to clean and instead of putting it into a van or something, well they use a much easier solution: fire.

I hate fire. Really, I do. You might, or not, know that I grew up in south of France and there we respect fire. Most of the forests around the village where my parents live, have at some point been eaten by fire. Nearly all my male friends when I grew up were volunteer firefighters. That's what you do, when you are a guy in South of France: you risk your life for 7Euros (or how much it is) per hour during your week-end and holidays to save the fabulous environment in which they have the chance to live.

A small reminder of how beautiful it is

So, yeah that's what the street cleaners do: they burn. It doesn't matter that it hasn't rained in 4 full months. It doesn't matter that there is a bit of wind. The other day I came out of the shower and I smelled it instantly: fire. We are not talking big here, but that doesn't matter. The fire was slowly making its way under the olive trees and other pines that I have across the road.


With this I realised that I don't even know the emergency number in Jordan, I need to check that out. But apparently I was not the only one who thought that this was a bad idea as a little later there was a fire truck.


This is just again an example of lack of common sense. fire + wind + dry leaves and trees don't make a good mixture. There are plenty of areas in Amman where you can see that there has been a fire, and I suspect it's exactly the same as what happens in my street. This is not the first time i see it since we are here, at least this time I knew where the smell was coming from.

You can see how the fire has heated the trees...

5 comments:

Scoop said...

They use fire to deal with the garbage problem too, here in Luanda. It is a good thing, though, because there is so much refuse in parts of the city that it would take YEARS to pick it all up, and then it would have to be disposed of somewhere.

And I'm sure it's a lot more sanitary too, to just burn what trash they can. It is almost incomprehensible the level of garbage in this city, so in this case fire is a good thing. Monitored wisely, of course.

Elisa said...

such a shame because the little trees that are there to decorate the streets are being jeopardized. It would make more sense if they burn the trash like outside the city limits.

Good reminder I also don't know the number to call in an emergency.

Unknown said...

It's not so much the garbage here - it gets picked up everyday I think - it's working quite well actually. No what really bothers me is that they just put fire to the dead leaves and oher grass and leave it like that!!! It's amazing that they don't think a little bit about what they do... I guess they can't be bothered to either do the fire correctly and stay until it's consumed or put it in the van that is following them!

Ehab said...

I don't think this is correct. You could probably call the Amman Municipality to complain.

Unknown said...

maybe but do you think they would do something??? yesterday there was a fire again...

Others To Read:

Related Posts with Thumbnails