The Garbage Barrels

There were no garbage cans at the house when we arrived so garbage was accumulateing with no way to get rid of it. We went shopping for garbage cans and had difficulty finding any. Those we did find were very expensive and would disappear if they were left unattended outside our gate. The local people told us to get old oil drums and have them made into garbage cans with handles. One of the members found a place to have them made. We followed him there, he negotiated the price, and we had garbage cans made while we watched and waited. The place was just a business that deals in used barrels on the side of the road under a tree . They used a sharpened steel plate and a sledge hammer to cut the top off the barrel just like a can opener. The bought rebar from the next business down the road and made it into handles and then welded them on the cans. We paid for the two barrels and then waited for almost two hours before the missionaries with the mission bakki (pickup) could come and take the cans home for us. We were just pleased to have garbage cans and loved watching what was going on around us while we waited. 

The picture below is taken of the intersection by the business. You can see that the activity is pretty varied, from goats to heavy traffic. The vans are the mass transit of Gaborone. They are privately owned but transit regular routes and have the route name and number on their front. They come by about ten minutes apart and honk their horn to see if anyone wants a ride. They hold fourteen people and are often completely full.

Garbage collection is not regularly scheduled but happens about every two weeks in residential neighborhoods. The collectors ring your bell and then place your cans out by the street for the truck to pick up about ten minutes later. The trouble is we do not have a bell by the gate so they would not be able to contact us. Also, if you are not home you just have to wait until the next time they come to collect but you don't know exactly what day that is. We had so much trash from getting the house set up we just put the cans outside the gate a few days ago because we could not miss a pickup and to our delight our trash was picked up today.