Trees along the roadside and other things

I visited with a friend a couple of days ago. She has a very nice house and her street is lined with flowering trees. Here are some photos of them. 

 

 

Notice the clean street. 

 

Okay, now comes the bad part. Here are some photos of my street. I live just a few doors down from this corner. It is always overflowing with garbage. I believe it must be one of the worst corners in this entire area. People know they have to bag their garbage and tie it up but they just throw everything on the street, even old stinky mattresses. And stuff sits there for weeks, sometimes months. It is awful.  

My only excuse for continuing to live next to this dump site is that I like my little apartment, my rent is about a hundred and forty dollars a month and I am within walking distance of everything in Ajijic. 

My friend, with the lovely tree lined street, pays over seven hundred and fifty dollars a month rent. My dream is that maybe by saving so much money on rent, one day I will be able to afford to buy my own house. But in the meantime, I have to live around that awful stinky garbage dump. After taking photos of it today,  I understood that I couldn't in good conscience ask anyone to come here and house sit for me. 

So here goes:

 

That is a huge pile of pieces of material that someone threw on the ground. The garbage men will not pick up stuff unless it is bagged and tied shut. Everyone KNOWS that, yet they just throw garbage out loose like that.  Maybe their house isn't as close to this mess as mine which is next to that car on the right. 

Out of sight, out of mind. That seems to be the philosophy of people who dump things like that here. 

 

This mess isn't even an unusual day. I can never understand why people throw stuff out there that they KNOW isn't ever going to be picked up. Especially old broken furniture and stinky mattresses. (That mattress in the background on the left side of the photo has been there over a month now)

 I could go out there every day, if I ever had the courage, strong enough back, and lots of energy, and clean it up. I could put everything in bags and tie them shut so the garbage men would pick up all the bags the next morning.  And before noon the same day, it would look like this again. It is very discouraging. I just have to keep reminding myself that I am saving money and maybe one day I will have a house of my own. Otherwise, it would be intolerable, living next to this dump site..... I guess I am so mad about it today because I recently visited with my friend in her lovely home on her quiet, clean street, lined with flowering trees. It is easy to get used to just about anything until you compare it to better ways of living. Then it is difficult to ignore the bad things. I don't know if this mess is a result of poverty or plain old lack of concern for others. 

I watched a program on Netflix about the Amazon and how the poor people there strip mine entire areas of the jungle just to get a few tiny pieces of gold, worth only six dollars to them. They know it is wrong. They can see that they have destroyed a huge section of the jungle where nothing is left but monster muddy holes, but they justify it by saying they have no other choices. They have to feed their children. (From photos taken in an airplane, entire areas look like the craters on the moon. No life at all.)  And other poor men illegally cut down four hundred year old trees in the jungle just to get a few dollars. They too know it is wrong. But they too believe they have no other way to feed their children. Unless they go into the drug business. That is another horror story. 

I don't have any answers to problems like this.  In this same program I saw large areas of the jungle where the poor farmers had cut everything down, so they could graze cattle. (Just one cow needs 1.5 acres of land pr year. So you can imagine how much of the jungle the farmers are destroying.). But one day we will have no more jungles, and then what? And what about this tiny corner of the world where the neighbors have no concern for the environment and trash it?   I have no answers or solutions....  Just a heart filled with sadness and despair.