One of the joys of staying in a place longer is the discovery of hidden gems. Or, in this case, social failure.
It all started the other evening when our wonderful host Tomasso dropped by with his family after dinner with the gift of cannoli. If you've never been to Sicily, you've never really had good cannoli. The outer-shell is a semi-sweet deep fried crispness surrounding a fresh, creamy, sheep's ricotta cheese, sweetened itself just a little. You have the choice of a variety of little flavour extras - like chocolate. In any event, we were socializing and finally got around to asking about where we take our refuse - the organics, recyclables and non-recyclables. We'd managed to generate quite a pile of organics making fresh lemon juice and cooking up a storm.
In the course of asking about what to do with refuse, we discovered much else about our lovely home. We are right on the border between the responsibility of Palermo and the responsibility of Trapani (municipal authorities sort of like like counties). The dividing line is only 9 meters from our gate - essentially at the end of the back yard. In Trapani's municipal area there is recycling, composting and all the usual waste diversion. Not in Palermo's municipal area. In Trapani's area the little streets and alley's have posted street signs, not in Palermo's.
At first, I thought Tomasso was saying that the group or society which does the work of municipal garbage collection had failed. Then I realized he was saying that society generally has failed in this respect. Graphic proof of this is found each turning of the road when you come upon stinking piles of garbage piled around garbage bins. Social Failure.
No comments:
Post a Comment