“My village in Madagascar against the invasion of plastic”

Andavadoaka, southwestern Madagascar. A fishing village for the most part of huts and wooden houses scattered on a stretch of coast of breathtaking beauty. An ancient world, isolated, which can be accessed through a long and difficult journey, whose last stretch, an entire day of sand track, is like a progressive immersion in a world increasingly distant from modernity. Yet, even in a silent sea that does not know the piercing roar of marine engines and on which small and large pirogues glide over the water like elements of an ancestral world, she is there. Where our “civilization” struggles to reach, plastic has long since arrived. Carried from afar by waves and currents or less frequently, after a long journey by land, often aboard a cart pulled by zebu in the form of bags of improbable cosmetics or bottles of “precious” drinks.

It arrives anyway and everywhere and settles down invading enchanted beaches and dusty village streets. Tolerated as a nuisance that you cannot get rid of even if you perceive its deleterious and harmful aspect. The large iron wire turtle, a plastic container donated by an unknown artist, which dominates the simple stalls of the small village market, is the concrete expression of this perception. Many hands have filled it. Hands of simple Vezo fishermen and perhaps Mikea nomads. People who put old bottles and cans with holes inside it … But there it remained. There is obviously no possibility of recycling, but neither is there a way to take that waste elsewhere. There are no means. And then the annoying presence is destined to remain part of the environment, to deface it and degrade it.

The same Italian volunteers, who for many years have managed the small local hospital that provides free treatment to the peoples of the coast, have come to get used to it. “What a pity”, “how much nicer it would be if …”. Discomfort, indignation, helplessness. Not unlike the sentiment of the inhabitants of many of our cities besieged by waste. But one day something happens. It is only a small change in the way of thinking, an imperceptible change of verb: from “you should find a way to clean”, to “you must” …

It happened one evening, a key moment in which everyone looked in the same direction, imagining that the population taken by the thousand urgent needs of the hard daily life could share the same gaze. Almost an anthropological heresy. Let’s clean the beach, let’s clean the village! Not in a hypothetical future it is far away, but now … Once the resignation has been overcome, ideas explode: involve everyone! Talking to the village chief, preparing posters (obviously handwritten), primary school … the local nurses are enthusiastic. They will talk about it to the priest asking for an announcement in the church. Then, as always, the difficulties begin to be glimpsed among the lights of enthusiasm. Difficulties made more acute by the reality of the place: where do we put it? We don’t have bags. How do we move it? We have no means. Where do we take it and how do we dispose of it? We are surrounded by miles and miles of sandy land covered with large thorny, semi-desert shrubs, but there is no place, hole, landfill. Nothing.

Villages reuse almost everything. Animals eat organic waste, wood decomposes, little glass is reused. The hospital has its own little hole and a kind of “incinerator”. There is no garbage collection. Strictly speaking, there is no garbage, apart from damn plastic. But the perspective has changed radically. In everyday life we ​​have all thought about involving the neighborhood and finally cleaning the street in which we live. But we never went further.

Here, however, we have made the big leap. We have decided, we also have a date: next weekend. Indeed, perhaps it is better to anticipate to Thursday. But the worm, everyone’s concern, expressed in a low voice, was that of finding themselves alone. First of all because it would have been impossible to clean kilometers of beach and also because the real goal was the involvement, the development of a transversal awareness among people with such different life experiences. A multiethnic and multicultural revolution, an ambitious project.

The seemingly insuperable obstacle actually seemed to be that of finding a means to take the plastic away from the village, to a place where it could be buried. But when you are launched towards a goal, ideas always come. The luxurious resort on the tip, for example. A reality completely detached from the context, a destination for exclusive tourism. People who never set foot in the village and remained locked in their wonderful ivory tower. But the resort would also have benefited if the entire beach had been cleaned, we thought. And he had means, including a truck.

Until the improbable happens. Just dare. On Thursday we would have a truck and a driver at our disposal. The village chief pointed out the place, respectful of the spirits of the thorny forest, far away from the sacred Baobabs and totally uninhabited. We struggled to understand whether or not the event had been properly advertised. We knew that it had also been talked about in church. The local nurses were amused. But really the whites, the “vasa ‘” would have collected the garbage of the village?

It began with 10 stupid “vasa ‘” who at 13 o’clock, equipped with black bags and rake (only one), began to clean up the main street. Initially arousing a lot of “salama” (the local greeting) and a lot of laughter. No support. Then a couple of women joined the market and, once the ice was broken, a flood of people. Women, young people, children. We were a few dozen in the center (well, even a village has a “center”) and certainly more than a hundred on the beach. A small army of children, many very small, dragging pieces of old jerry cans filled with rubbish. The black sacks ended immediately, but empty rice sacks, sacks and containers of all kinds, even old sheets to be used as containers, came out of nowhere.

A lot of people collected plastic, pieces of cloth, old nets, abandoned sandals. After three hours they pointed out to us (with a lot of respect and reverence) that the notebook sheets that no place touched and only we collected to improve the level of cleanliness, were their toilet paper. The human tide has reached the end of the beach. People unmade by the heat and fatigue, others who went on, dozens and dozens of sacks. Heaps of everything. Many, many laughs. It looked like a great game. Incredibly, in the total organizational chaos, the truck began to be loaded and shuttled between the village and the desert area.

A grind for us elderly, but the Malagasy were destroyed in the same way. The harvest ended with a party at “Dada”, the only place in the village, where everyone was offered sambusa (triangles of pasta filled with fish). The myriad of children coke and orange soda and beer for adults. A cosmic chaos. Absolute integration. Returning home, dragging us home, we saw women and men gathering branches, algae and various things in front of their huts, cleaning everything up. Power of non-verbal messages … A small triumph.

* Piermario Palattella is a dentist at the Policlinico Umberto I in Rome: in the last ten years he has been to Africa six times to offer assistance as a volunteer. With him also Giuseppe Nardi, director of Anesthesia of the Infirm Hospital of Rimini