OUTSIDE A SUPERMARKET I witnessed a lady pelt the wrapping of the food she was eating on the ground.
She was holding a small child.
I’m accustomed to seeing people litter but it always stings me.
It is such a common act I usually don’t say anything, except if the litterers are children.
I probably feel an underage litterer has a chance but adult litterers are too set in their ways. On this occasion I said something to an adult litterer.
It was because of the child she was holding; a little girl that looked to be around two or three. I said to the woman in as calm a tone as I could at the time, “Miss, set a good example fuh yuh daughter. You should know better.” She calmly replied, without hesitation, and kept right on walking.
She asked me that one simple and profound question: “How you know I know better?”
She was totally right. Who is me to tell she wuh she know and don’t know? Maybe she did not know better. Maybe she was doing exactly as she was taught to do and teaching the little girl accordingly. When that girl grows up she may teach her children to do exactly the same.
This is exactly the position we find ourselves in daily. People around us are doing things that make no sense; to us. To them it may be perfectly normal. When that child in school uniform passes you on the street, talking loudly in a language formerly reserved for sailors and pirates, it may not be her intention to be disrespectful. That may be how mummy speaks to her.
I made some assumptions; that the woman at the supermarket was the child’s parent and that she should know better. I assumed that a parent would want to be a good role model or that the role they would want to model for their child is similar to the one that I would want to model for mine.
We live at time with a diversity of values, beliefs, attitudes and practices.
Everybody does not feel the same way as I do about littering. On a trip to another island, I stood outside store drinking. After finishing the bottle of water I asked the shopkeeper if he had a bin I could put it in. There were none on the streets. He happily pointed me to the foot of a utility pole outside his door where plastic cups, bottles and food containers of all kinds were normally thrown.
I should not assume that anyone knows better or that their idea of what better is, is the same as mine. What I can say is that I like to see litter-free public spaces. My house could be untidy but I want to see the streets clean. But after the lady walked away, so did I. Her litter was left to the
wind. I told myself, “Wuh it ain me dat drop it! Outside this supermarket is not my responsibility! Why I should get my hands dirty cause she doan know nuh bettuh?”
These were reasonable excuses for not picking up the wrapper, but none good enough for keeping Barbados clean. If a clean environment was important enough for me to push my mout in de woman business, why wasn’t it important enough for me to push in my hand and pick up her garbage?
It was not the first last or only type of situation where I took this attitude. Many times I’ve seen something wrong and even if I said something about it, took no action to address it. It was somebody else’s garbage.
Garbage has a way of crossing borders. It starts in one person’s yard and overflows into their neighbour’s. The stench carries. Mosquitoes breed on one person’s property and infest other people’s homes. If I don’t take some kind of responsibility for my irresponsible neighbour’s garbage it will soon become mine.
It may not be fair but it’s true. In an ideal world everyone will handle their own mess. Let me know when we live in an ideal world so we can just chill. Until then: poverty in one country will cause refugee problems in another, crime in the ghettos will spread to the heights, some people’s poor eating habits will cause chronic diseases that strain the health care system for everyone, underperforming schools will lead to underperforming businesses.
The current situation with some of the youth is a good example. Bad behaved, underperforming children are treated like somebody else’s garbage. Sometimes their parents have tried their best but cannot do better.
When the youths go floating in the wind, who is there to pick them up?
Adrian Green is a creative communications specialist. Email Adriangreen14@gmail.com
