CHANGING THEIR SKIES Stories from Africa The Rubbish Dump STEVE CHIMOMBO

CHANGING THEIR SKIES

Stories from Africa

The Rubbish Dump

STEVE CHIMOMBO

A storyfrom Malawi, retold by Jennifer Bassett

Rubbish is a problem in the rich world. There is too much of it, and people don't know what to do with it. In places like Africa there is less rubbish, because people have less to throw away.

An airport rubbish dump is a strange place, a meeting point for rubbish that has travelled a long way. It is aiso a meeting point for Joey and Mazambezi.. .

Joey sat on the ground, playing with a small toy car. The car was made out of bits and pieces - lots of old wire, pieces of cardboard, sticks, and the tops of baby-food cans for wheels.

Joey was working hard, his hands busily pulling and pushing pieces of wire which were not in the right places. After a mment, he put the car down with a pleased little grunt, and began to sing:

The white man is wise

He made the aeroplane

It's nothing else

But determination.

His high voice filled the air for a few minutes. Then came a louder noise - the squeak, rattle, and thump of a wheelbarrow along the road past the last row of houses. Joey's song stopped, started, stopped again. The wheelbarrow was getting nearer, and the squeak, rattle, and thump got louder and louder.

It was Mazambezi. The nane neant 'rubbish collector', and that's what everyone called him — behind his back. Mazambezi, pushing his wheelbarrow, with the rubbish collected from the airport,

Joey stopped playing with his car, and looked unhappy. He remembered that today was Friday, and on

Fridays the big aeroplane came in from London. People around the airport called it 'Four Engine' Mazambezi was bringing in the rubbish from that plane, which neant it was now too late for Joey to run to the airport. He liked to go up to the balcony in the airport building and watch the passengers in their expensive clothes getting off the plane. They always carried bags and caneras, and strange and mysterious things from faraway countries. But it was too late to see them today. Perhaps the next passengers were already on the plane, ready to leave.

Then Joey heard the sound of aeroplane engines, and knew he was right. He stared at the sky A Imment later the rooftops of the houses began to rattle and the great silver plane went overhead in a terrible roar of engine noise.

It was hard to live next to an international airport. Every time planes took off or landed, the airport workers little houses shook and rattled. But Joey didn't mind. He loved the noise and the roar, and the cleverness that nude those great nuchines fly like birds through the sky.

Soon the plane was gone. Joey still watched the sky, thinking Who was on the plane today'? Where was it going? To Salisbury, Johannesburg, and then on to England? One day, when he could read, he would find all those famous places in a book and learn about them.

The squeak, rattle, and thump of the wheelbarrow was very near now. Joey left his toy car and walked down to the road where Mazambezi was passing. The rubbish dump was only a hundred metres from his house.

'Hello, Joey,' the man said to Joey.

'Hello. ' Joey stopped to watch the wheelbarrow pass.

'You haven't gone to school today?' Mazambezi asked.

'We've got a rmnth's holiday.'

'That's good. '

'What have you got this tine?' asked Joey.

' 1 don't know,' Mazambezi said. 'A few pieces of cheese and some vomit, nuybe.'

Joey covered his nose with his hand when he heard the word 'vomit'. He knew that passengers on planes sometimes felt ill and that there were special bags for them to vomit into. Why did people vomit when they

were flying in a plane? Sometimes Joey's father vomited, if he drank too nulCh beer in the evenings. It wasn't very nice.

Joey followed the old nun. He could never think of Mazambezi without his wheelbarrow - man and machine belonged together The nuchine was old, and black with dirt and bits of old rubbish. Every part of the nuchine squeaked and rattled when it Imved. The man too was old, with a lot of grey in his short black hair. His clothes were all bits and pieces, and full of holes; an old green and brown army hat kept the sun off his head.

They were nearly at the rubbish pit now, and Joey remembered his first meeting with Mazambezi and his first visit to the dump

It was a week after his family rmved into one of the little airport houses. Every day Joey saw

Mazambezi go pasfwith his wheelbarrow to the dump and then, later, go past again, going back to the airport. Why did he take so long to leave the rubbish? What did he do at the dump?

So one day Joey followed him The terrible Snell from the rubbish dump cane along the road to neet him. It was like a cloud that filled his nose, his rmuth, his head, his stomach. He saw Mazambezi sitting by the side of the pit, looking down into it. Joey went nearer, and then his foot hit something on the ground and he fell . . . into sonething soft and horrible.

He tried to get up, and a hand arm t0 him

'Are you all right?'

The old nun's voice was coming of the pit, Joey thought.

'Don't touch ne!' he shouted anED ly- You dirty old Mazan%ezi!'

The old nun stepped back slowly, Joey got to his feet, turned, and ran. Halfway across tbL' field to his house, he looked back. Mazambezi was looking through the rubbish in the wheelbarrow, finding bits of food left from the aeroplane neals. This was his lunch

Back at hone Joey looked at bis dirty clothes and renembered the vomit. He went behind the kitchen and began to cry. His rmther found hirr* there. She looked at his clothes and knew at once.

'You've been to that snelly rubbish pit! You mustn't go there - you'll catch sonething horrible and get ill.'

So Joey was in trouble with his rmther, and in rmre trouble with his father when he can*e hone from work

After that Joey spent his free tiine on the balcony at the airport. He learnt the tines of all the planes, and he knew which plane was coining in, when, and where from. He also worked on his toy car, and when he got bored with that, he built himelfan aerc>Plane- It wasn't very good and looked a bit like an old potato, but Joey flew it to Moscow, Tokyo, London, New York, and back

Mazambezi went past with his wheelbarrow every day as usual. Joey sometimes saw hint because New York airport was on the road to the rubbish dunp. One day Joey was talking to the nun at Tokyo airport.

'Coming in to land. Can you hear ne? Coming in to land. Can you hear ne?' he said again and again. He knew the right words to say because his father told him what pilots said.

'Look, Joey,' a voice said behind him 'I've got a real plane for you.'

It was Mazambezi. He was holding out a toy plane, with AIR RHODESIA written on the side. He looked at Joey with his sad brown eyes, and Joey looked back at him afraid. He stepped back, away from the old man, then stepped forward again, took the toy plane, and ran home as fast as he could.

Near the house he stopped and hid the plane under his shirt. It looked very strange, and Joey crossed his arms in front of him, which looked even stranger. He walked into the house, singing,

The white man is wise He made the aemplane It's nothing else But determination.

Luckily, his rmther was cleaning the big bedroom Joey ran to the little room where he slept, and hid his AIR RHODESIA plane in his school bag. He kept all his secret

things in there — foreign rmney, empty cigarette packets, all the things he found in the airport. He lay down on his sleeping nut and listened to his mther cleaning. Then his hand went into his school bag and brought out the little plane. It had a broken tail, but when he held it at the tail end, no one could see the broken bit.

'Joey, are you in there?'

'Yes, Mother,' Joey answered. Quickly, he pushed the plane back into his bag, and lay down again.

'What are you doing down there?' His rmther was a big woman, and she filled the doorway.

'I - I have a headache, Mother. '

'Why didn't you tell ne?'

'You w'ere busy, Mother. '

'Too busy to tell me you are ill?'

'Cone here, Joey '

'Yes, Mother.'

'Now, don't try and tell me you're sick, when you're not!' As usual, her finger was five centimetres away from his nose.

'No, Mother. '

'I saw you running around and singing a few minutes ago. '

'I - I - Mother -' 'Don't lie to n.'

'No, Mother. '

'Good. Now, I want you to go to the shop to get ne some sugar and sone tea. Here's the rmney. '

'Yes, Mother. '

Joey took the rmney and went out without a word. He was afraid that his tmther would find the plane. He knew what she would say - Where did you get that, Joey? He ran to the shop and hack as fast as he could.

'I tlK)ught you had a terrible headache,' his tmther said when he got back it's gone, Mother. '

'Good. Now, help ne take the things out of your room. I need to clean it.'

Joey carried his school bag, his books, clothes, and sleeping nut out of the room, put them all in a corner, and stood over them When his rmther finished, he took his things carefully back into the room

'You're very strange today.' His rmther was looking hard at him. 'Are you sure your headache is gone?'

'No, Mother. ' Joey did not look at her. 'It's come back. '

'Mmm Maybe,' she said. 'You can lie down.'

Joey lay down again on his nut. He felt calner now.

His father cane home late that night, full of beer and smging noisily Joey heard his voice in the kitchen, telling his mother about the white nun.

'The white man is a nice nun,' said Joey's father. 'The White nun buys me drinks, he brings good things to* the country - jobs, cars, aeroplanes. The white nun is the African's friend

Joey's father was very boring when he was like this. His rmther was now in the big bedroom, but Joey knew she was listening. Everybody in the house had to listen because his father talked so loudly.

It was a week before Joey was brave enough to go and neet Mazambezi on the road.

'Thank you for the plane,' he said to the old man.

Mazambezi gave a grunt that was lost in the squeak, rattle, thump of the wheelbarrow. Joey walked beside him down the road.

'What have you got this tine?' he asked.

'Some pieces of meat, with the usual things.

Joey tried not to think about the 'usual things'. The nun and Joey turned the corner, and the smell of the pit came strongly towards them

The pit was very old and large, but not deep. Many other people used it, not just Mammbezi. Office workers brought their banana skins, chicken bones, fish bones - if people did not want something, they threw it into the pit. The flies buzzed angrily over it all, and in the sky above big black birds circled, calling loudly. Down in the pit, under the rubbish, lived other kinds of life.

Joey looked at all the empty milk, fish, and meat cans lying in the pit.

'Did all that come from the plane?' he asked.

'Yes.'

'They must eat a lot.'

'When the white nun eats, he eats.' Mazambezi picked up a can from the edge of the pit. 'Where do you think this can cane from?' he said.

' Inndon?'

'No.'

'Paris?'

'No. It was made in Hong Kong,' Mazambezi said. 'I sit here every day and look into the pit. I pick up neat cans or fish cams and think about the places where they cane from. Japan? Russia? England? America? South Africa? All the world is open to ' He sounded excited. 'How nuny thousands of miles has this can of fish travelled? Who didn't eat their piece of cheese? What language do they speak? What hopes and dreams do they have? I don't need to ride in their planes. I sit here, and Russia, America, Hong Kong, England all conr to ne. They all hnd their way into this rubbish dump

'l do the same,' Joey said quickly, 'when I go to the balcony to watch the planes come and go. Every day at school, when I open my books, I hope that one day I can read all about these places. Perhaps even visit them. Walking in the streets of London or New York or Tokyo just imagine it!'

'I know how you feel,' Mazambezi said.

'But I've also seen the places.' Joey's eyes were shining.

'Have you?'

Yes. Every day, when I fly the plane that you gave ne, I see them so clearly. I drink Coca-Cola in New York, have tea in London, and go for a drive in Tokyo '

They sat at the edge of the dump, with their legs hanging down into the pit, and looked at the broken bottles nude in England, empty food cans nude in the USA, and plastic bags nude in Japan, Each thought his own thoughts. The smells of the rubbish were all around them; the black birds circled above them, and the endless buzzing of the flies rang in their ears.

Here, the oid nun said, 'have a piece of cheese. Maybe it came from South Africa.'

Joey took the cheese and began to eat it. He put. his back against the wheelbarrow, getting comfortable. «

After a while they heard the noise of aeroplane engines.

'It's the "Four Engine", ' Joey said.

Yes, it's the big plane taking off.'

'Will it stop in Salisbury?'

' Maybe.'

'Who's in it?'

Oh, the usual. Rich fat white nen, brown men, and a few blacks. '

Students going for more education. '

'Yes, I forgot about those. ' Mazambezi stood up with a grunt. 'I've got to go now too. '

'Goodbye,' said Joey slowly. He too stood up. 'We Il neet again tomorrow?'

'Yes. ' The old nun began to push his wheelbarrow and they went away down the road - the squeak, rattle, and thump of the machine, and the silent nun.

Joey watched them go. Who will die first, he thought, nun or machine? But not yet. For now, Joey knew that everything would stay the same. Every day there would be the same question and the same answer:

'What has the big plane brought today?'

'Oh, bits and pieces from the w'hite nun's land. '

The rubbish would find its way to the dump; the flies and the birds; Mazambezi and Joey.