At the Garbage Site


Staring at the decaying morsels of food remnants, yellowish green rotting vegetables, churned on top with ash and human feaces and all mode of garbage waste, provokes the urge to vomit. The air is thick with pungent smell that chokes and suffocates one at the same time. A cloud of flies buzzes hovers, flies and lands here and there on the rotting waste, and like a rioting mob in public gathering. Complementing the scene are scavenger birds flying high and low allover the place pecking and scratching the plastic bags in a bored manner. Street children also inhabit the place making it their territory after resisting “the swoop” by city council askaris to be taken to orphanages. This sight provokes me to thinking: if only the city council could find a better way of handling the waste, the city can avoid such sites that not only creating health hazards to the neighboring residences but also harbors thieves and dogs with rabies.
To the far right are walls of building ruins which the owner, after voice of reason decided to abandon; for his safety because of encroachment by waste and company. This is the headquarters of the ‘mayor’ of the disposal site, a huge, soot black, robust being, sleeping spread outside his ‘palace’ enjoying the morning sun. The ‘mayor’ raises his head, scans around his precincts, satisfied, yawns loudly and resumes his sleeping position by his cane. Young street children are quarrelling and fighting over a piece of bone, initially picked by a small boy. The ‘discoverer’ not able to resist his elders is pushed, and falls down away from the developing scuffle. He raises, disgusted, and dusts his tattered, long greased shirt. I doubt that he has shorts. Convinced it is ‘clean’, he moves off to another heap of garbage and scavenges on, consoling himself; someday I will grow strong to fend off my bullies and establish my niche in the territory and may be became the ‘mayor’.
The fight continues breaking up to series of small fights of twos and threes. Finally, the strongest rules, takes the bone and nibbles contentedly, moving away with pride registered all over his body movements. The battle is worn but the war continues, waking up ‘his worship the mayor’ who raises the cane beside him and threateningly, points to the fighting boys. Abruptly, the fights stop and the boys run away fearing his wrath. He would have stopped them before I think, but gave them time to sort out their differences. He grew through these fights himself. They help one survive in harsh environment like this and therefore are healthy for the young boys. Tranquility returns around the ruins, the ‘mayor’ bored, goes to sleep again.

Comments

  1. Bonie Nzioka Power of Words10 February 2012 at 11:06

    Power of words in bringing out sense of touch, smell, sight etc makes creative writing worthwhile...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Women role during the Renaissance

Image
The Role of Women in the Renaissance Introduction             The society during the Renaissance period was patriarchal in nature and the role of women during this period was just in the backdrop of the men’s roles. Just like in the Middle Ages women in Renaissance were denied participation in the politics, which was legally considered as the domain of men. The women irrespective of their class were expected to play and perform in the roles of housewife. The women in the class of peasants worked in the farm hand in hand with their husbands and performed the duties of running the home. The women of middle class merchants and shop owners in many times helped their husbands in running the businesses. On the other end, the wives of the elite class, though were attended by a number of servants, were often involved in the household tasks, cooking, entertaining, and sewing among other chores (Brown and McBride 48). In this view, th...
Read more

Conflict Management

Conflict Management Conflict is a normal part of life that occurs when people are interacting because each person in the interaction has a different life experience, and different expectations. This assumption is also true for marriage, where two people come together, coming from different backgrounds, and having different expectations of the marriage, as well as holding various expectations about their spouse. Within this setting, each person is bound to react differently to various circumstances in the marriage that may bring about conflicts. The conflicts are a healthy part of a relationship involving two people with feeling thus bound to either get hurt or hurt another, or do something that the other is not happy about. However, the strategy each person or both employ to address the problems highly determines their ability to manage the conflict without letting it unduly affect or disrupt the marriage. Therefore, as exemplified in the case of John and Mary discussed herein, c...
Read more

Analysis of Pathos, Ethos and Logos in Ads

Analysis of Pathos, Ethos and Logos in Ads             The rhetorical appeals; pathos, ethos and logos are in one way or another employed in advertisements with the aims of persuasion or ultimately convincing the consumers to buy products. Everyday as you walk around cities’ streets and highways you will no miss these big billboards that are aesthetically appealing due to graphic images in captivating colors and visual information structure which captures your mind eyes. Most advertisements are poignant and appeal to consumers because the marketers do a fine work with their market research and furthermore are aware of the ideal aesthetics that endear to the people. The essence of employing the persuasion through pathos ensures that the ads appeal on the emotions and desires of the consumers in real life. The rhetoric appeal - ethos in ads is based on famous celebrities whom the people hero-worship and thus they aspire to be ...
Read more