Source

This is my entry to the #freewrite 5-minute exercise hosted by @mariannewest. See details here.

Before I set foot on the United States for the first time, the idea of clean neighborhoods was just something we saw only on television; the idea of recycling was something we saw in science fiction. And we were not doing that bad then. Back in 2001, we had trash trucks passing by your street 3 days a week. Our landfills were a mess, though. They were just burning hills or valleys that “decorated” the entrance of every town as toxic backgrounds to billboards of smiling politicians promising to save the planet. They've just gotten worse in the last years.

Thus, one of the first things I noticed when I arrived at Athens, Oh (home of the OU Bobcats) was how cleaned everything was and how ubiquitous recycling was. What I did not know was that in in-campus housings recycling was kind of compulsory. I found that out the hard way thanks to a fucking raccoon.

One afternoon I got a letter from the housing department informing me that I, along with a dozen other residents, had been fined $10 because our trash (especially envelops with our names on them) had been found in the wrong places (e.g. floor, grass, parking lot).

We all filed, to no avail, appeals trying to explain that we had nothing to do with the trashgate. For the housing office it was too farfetched a tale that a naughty raccoon had emptied the paper container looking for organic trash and out of anger, for not having found any, had spread our envelopes and term papers all over the complex. Apparently, raccoons were more recycle-conscious than a bunch of grad students, mostly from third-world countries who, in fact, did not even consider recycle as a foreseeable achievement in human development.

[end of five minutes]

I refused to pay the fine for almost a year, but by the time I was about to graduate, I was informed that unless I paid that fine, I would not get my MA diploma.

So, I went ahead and paid the unfair penalty, and swore hatred to all raccoons on earth henceforth, while in my mind the idea of compulsory recycling started to appear tricky, to say the least. I know now as a fact that recycle in Venezuela would not be possible, despite our not having those masked demons among our fauna. With so many dogs, cats, and people foraging for food in the garbage, there would be so many fines people would start another revolution. Which, now that I think about it, does not sound like a bad idea.

Thanks for your visit

---

Visítanos en: www.equipocardumen.com.ve