The weather here has turned cooler, with night temperatures falling into the 50's, feeling more like Indian summer in Iowa. In Iowa City, we'd have the windows open to enjoy sleeping in the cool night air, so we tried it here.
Mistake.
Around 1:30 I wake because of acrid smell of something burning. Annoyed but not alarmed, IG & I agree to close the windows. I'd thought that we could escape at least until dawn, but somewhere someone was burning . . . er, crap, to put it as daintily as a I can in my present humor.
Alas, the smell is nothing new. Each morning when we normally get up, and each evening around sun down, we expect the assault, but we'd decided to try the open windows when, around 9 p.m., we returned home and the air seemed fine--refreshing even--so that when we did get to bed we only had to contend with some ambient noise. The last of the Divali firecrackers, the Harpo Marx horns on the last buses of the evening, and barking dogs: none of these deterred us from falling into a pleasant sleep. And I suspect that we would've remained asleep even with an idiot playing drums within earshot as I write this.
All of this might be written off as the ramblings of a cranky, old insomniac, but I think that it's indicative of a larger problem. The likely source of the problem is the mini-slum about a quarter-mile from us that lies next to a garbage dump (not a landfill, mind you). Of course, in a sense, everywhere is a garbage dump the way trash litters the streets, but I think that this area collects trash from other places for sorting, recycling, and burning. I suspect that the residents there use the trash for fuel as well, which accounts for the noxious burning smell especailly during the morning and evening hours. For me, I believe that it's probably just an annoyance, but for anyone living next to the source of the smoke, I imagine we're talking a source of real harm to health. I remember that in Cameroon Abbas worked with households to get the cooking smoke out of a confined area by the use of a hole or chimney through the roof, and they seemed to be burning "clean" fuel (wood). She identified cooking smoke as a real cause of harm. I suspect we have the same problem here.
The answer might seem simple: tell these folks that this type of burning harms them and their family. (Set aside problems of my utterly deficient Hindi and their likely non-existent English for a moment). Unfortunately, I also suspect that extreme poverty plays a role here. I read earlier today that somewhere around a third of Indians live on an average earning of $1.25 a day, the subsistence poverty line established by the World Bank. Amid the growing Indian middle class and glittering lives of some extremely rich Indians (think Bollywood), this is an appalling figure. It also means that even if the knowledge could be conveyed, extreme poverty precludes any alternative. I suspect that trash is all that they can afford to use for heating and cooking.
The government rations propane, which is surely a stupid idea, as that simply creates a black market and does not make gas available for the poor in any significant number, which, I assume, is the rationale for such a policy. But I do appreciate how the "creative destruction" (Schumpeter) that capitalism requires can be so frightening to those on the edge. People living a subsistence life or one of relative poverty dont' have the resislience to deal with changes. It's tough in the developing countries (just think of the problems that unemployment can cause a family). But poverty in the U.S. doesn't hold a candle to what we're talking about here. Our social safety net, while certainly imperfect, prevents (I hope!) the kind of destitution that we see here.
So while I've written my screed, it's gotten better in here. My annoyed nose and ddisposition will recover and settle back down for the night. But the problem remains, a very big problem, and I really fear that it won't get resolved any time soon.
Mistake.
Around 1:30 I wake because of acrid smell of something burning. Annoyed but not alarmed, IG & I agree to close the windows. I'd thought that we could escape at least until dawn, but somewhere someone was burning . . . er, crap, to put it as daintily as a I can in my present humor.
Alas, the smell is nothing new. Each morning when we normally get up, and each evening around sun down, we expect the assault, but we'd decided to try the open windows when, around 9 p.m., we returned home and the air seemed fine--refreshing even--so that when we did get to bed we only had to contend with some ambient noise. The last of the Divali firecrackers, the Harpo Marx horns on the last buses of the evening, and barking dogs: none of these deterred us from falling into a pleasant sleep. And I suspect that we would've remained asleep even with an idiot playing drums within earshot as I write this.
All of this might be written off as the ramblings of a cranky, old insomniac, but I think that it's indicative of a larger problem. The likely source of the problem is the mini-slum about a quarter-mile from us that lies next to a garbage dump (not a landfill, mind you). Of course, in a sense, everywhere is a garbage dump the way trash litters the streets, but I think that this area collects trash from other places for sorting, recycling, and burning. I suspect that the residents there use the trash for fuel as well, which accounts for the noxious burning smell especailly during the morning and evening hours. For me, I believe that it's probably just an annoyance, but for anyone living next to the source of the smoke, I imagine we're talking a source of real harm to health. I remember that in Cameroon Abbas worked with households to get the cooking smoke out of a confined area by the use of a hole or chimney through the roof, and they seemed to be burning "clean" fuel (wood). She identified cooking smoke as a real cause of harm. I suspect we have the same problem here.
The answer might seem simple: tell these folks that this type of burning harms them and their family. (Set aside problems of my utterly deficient Hindi and their likely non-existent English for a moment). Unfortunately, I also suspect that extreme poverty plays a role here. I read earlier today that somewhere around a third of Indians live on an average earning of $1.25 a day, the subsistence poverty line established by the World Bank. Amid the growing Indian middle class and glittering lives of some extremely rich Indians (think Bollywood), this is an appalling figure. It also means that even if the knowledge could be conveyed, extreme poverty precludes any alternative. I suspect that trash is all that they can afford to use for heating and cooking.
The government rations propane, which is surely a stupid idea, as that simply creates a black market and does not make gas available for the poor in any significant number, which, I assume, is the rationale for such a policy. But I do appreciate how the "creative destruction" (Schumpeter) that capitalism requires can be so frightening to those on the edge. People living a subsistence life or one of relative poverty dont' have the resislience to deal with changes. It's tough in the developing countries (just think of the problems that unemployment can cause a family). But poverty in the U.S. doesn't hold a candle to what we're talking about here. Our social safety net, while certainly imperfect, prevents (I hope!) the kind of destitution that we see here.
So while I've written my screed, it's gotten better in here. My annoyed nose and ddisposition will recover and settle back down for the night. But the problem remains, a very big problem, and I really fear that it won't get resolved any time soon.
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