E-waste

Today I went to Agblogbloshie to watch my friend give a presentation to some local leaders on e-waste. A lot of the guys that live in the slum salvage metals out of toxic waste shipped from the west to sell on the scrap market.

To be honest I didn't really know this was a big problem- I just thought the stinking wasteland was like that, I didn't know it was all e-waste- but today I chatted with a girl sitting on an empty computer moniter as a stool who worked with this metal and I watched a kid chew on a battery last night because he didn't have anything else to play with. Im starting to see how bad it is.

You can learn about it here http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/video/video_index.html

Afterwards I changed into a dress in the back room of a chicken market and got dropped off at a really nice wedding. Ghana isn't all poverty and grime- this country is really beautiful, and there is so much hope in it- but this "not-in-my-backyard" un-official policy we have in the West has got to stop. We do it for our poverty, we do it with our waste- We hide our emotions and our pain even, for someone else to deal with. I think its time we face up.

My friend was kind of discouraged after the talk and didn't think that it would change much, so I made him a dove our of the info papers he was handing out to remind him that there is hope even in the smallest things. There is hope for all of us.