Most of Africa has no garbage collection, so people leave their garbage exactly where they are finished using it. Village roads are lined with plastic bags and bottles, streams are plugged up with people’s unwanted items. Seeing the garbage blowing in the wind, getting caught up on trees, and floating in the puddles makes me lower my head, part in shame, part in regret.

It is a visual reminder of how much garbage there is in the world. Just as we don’t air our dirty laundry, we don’t air our unwanted items. We bury our garbage and hide it under the soil; out of sight, out of mind. Because we can’t see it, we don’t worry about it. We put it under the cupboard in the kitchen sink, then on the side of the road every week. And we never see it again. But it’s there, rotting, leaking into our earth and our water, in the same way that the garbage that you can see in plain sight, here in Africa, blows in the wind.