On living brownish green

Malawi poses some acute challenges to my desire to live a more green life and have a smaller impact on the planet. Sometimes I can silence my disdain or minimize my vitriol about things like black smoke pouring out of vehicles and plastic bags littering roads and walking paths (although, if you asked Jon, I am not very good about holding back comment). When Jon and I talk about these things, we often wind up exchanging all sorts of semi-patronizing, Western thoughts about development, discussing the leisure time requirements for an environmental movement to grow, and lamenting (for me) the desire for many to adopt the same type of consumer and convenience lifestyle perfected in many developed countries, most notably my own. I can almost feel some of you stop reading… But, wait! A quick look at two photos shows these issues more acutely.

As an example of my brown life, I went out for Indian food last night, and asked to have the leftovers boxed. I should have known better. The contents came individually bagged in plastic, then placed in a plastic box, and then put in a plastic bag. I almost died. All I could do was at least return the plastic bag, much to the mortification of my table mates.

In contrast, Malawi does have ingenious indigenous solutions to a greener lifestyle. While returning from a conference at the lake last week, my colleagues wanted to bring back some fish. The thought of 4 hours in a hot car with dead fish and no cooler almost made me gag. But, putting each person’s fresh fish in plastic bags, as the seller suggested (for my benefit, he said), would be equally (ok, not *equally*) distressing. So, what to do? Hang the fish from the car’s sideview mirrors using reeds! Did they only suggest the plastic to my friends because I was in the car??? They seemed like experts on the window hanging, so I can only presume that they wanted the extra $.30 for the plastic. Arghh.

So, that’s a little insight into the greenish brown of life around here.

ps: the car still stank