“J’ai donné ma langue au chat. Tu as donné ta langue au chat. Il/Elle a donné sa langue au chat. Le chat est trilingue.” -l’un de mes élèves en CM2

Feb 12, 2016

MODE RINGARDISER

In front of my prison compound (the university residence affectionately known as “Alcatraz”), I ran into another assistant who I worked with in training. We discussed many things like Hypocrisy (Michael Chabon and Kendrick Lamar were the works I cited), experiences at work, and finally recycling, that he lives nearby and there is recycling at his place.

I wanted to bring my meter squared of recycling (the entire closet packed with what has accumulated since mid-december) immediately, but he pushed back a few days. He had said sometime in the week and then on the phone started trying to negotiate early next week. My head almost exploded because it had been many weeks where I just couldn’t stand it, I felt it was unhygienic to not be able to recycle in my residence and not have any other solutions.

He tells me his landlord said there is a drop off nearby. He says we can go in the morning before I start work, 7am. I got up way early, and was ready at 7. I called him and he says 7:15 but arrives around 7:30. The indeterminacy of the entire situation makes me want to just pay the guy 20 euros so I can be sure to be to school on time, but I go with him jusqu’au bout.

There’s a bus that goes there, and it’s two stops away. I jump on and he’s not even on the bus. We catch up at the next stop. Then he leads me to the wide open road of a highway. We literally have to run across it. He has no idea where we are going. I am so anxious because I would die if I were late for school that I just want to go. Wild goose chase alert.

In between highway fences, there is a single recycling bin between high speed lanes that lead to more highway. I look inside and it is filled with trash. I am disgusted, but it is the last ditch effort. We put the 6 giant bags of recycling in, I run across several lanes of highway and go to school. All day I reek of sweat from the most ringard quality of this experience (kids asked to open windows), which should be efficient and simple in what one would imagine is a first world country, recycling in La Capitale.