It’s significant work, they say.
Business has slowed down for the day at the waste dump.
The last few bottles are being emptied by Bamfo and her youngest children, Nkunim, 10, and Josephine, 6, respectively. She will have a nap by 8 o’clock and rise at midnight to study for her Bible before resuming work at dawn.
Bamfo never imagined that she would pick up trash.
When she finally obtained her school certificate at the age of 19, she managed to assemble enough money to pay for a secretarial course by selling oranges. However, she was unable to purchase a typewriter.
She practiced drawing the keyboard on her exercise book while the other girls sat idle in their computers while the other girls squirmed in their computers. She pressed her fingers into the paper to practice.
Soon, the funds ran out. She ended up working on a building site while not the office job she had envisioned.
As she leans forward on her office chair to keep an eye on any final delivery tricycles, Bamfo says, “I see myself – I’m a big loser, and there’s nothing.” The world is against me, I say.
Then one morning when she woke up, she discovered that the building site had vanished overnight, leaving behind a dump with tons of bottles of water and nylon wigs.
Her five children slept through. Her husband had not arrived home, as usual. She urgently needed money to purchase cassava to make banku-dupling stew.
A friend had informed her that plastic waste factories in the city would pay just a few centimeters per kilogram. One of the most difficult jobs there was involved, requiring both stigma and shame as well.
People assume that you have no family to care for you if you do this because you are a woman. They believe you to be bad. You are regarded as a witch, according to them.
One day when she returned home, she discovered that her husband had abandoned her. But not before he called her father to let him know that her daughter had turned into a “vulture.”
The shame was only made worse by her father’s separation. Bamfo relocated to the other side of the city with her children to escape the teasing of her neighbors.
She then sold the waste collected from pickers to factories and recycling facilities. There, she took control of her small yard. She gradually constructed a wooden home. She eventually found the courage to call her father.
“I told you to come see my work,” I said. See that it is not a bad thing.
He couldn’t help but be impressed when he saw the yard and the tricycle teams that had become Nkosoo Waste Management, which was Bamfo’s business.
She once recalled him saying, “You are a man, not a woman,” with equal parts admiration and accusation. Your brother doesn’t have the heart you do, even your brother does not.
She now hopes to use some of her resilience. King, the yard’s supervisor, claims that Bamfo and her waste business saved him from sleeping on a nearby dumpsite as a young child. She is so bad that I can’t criticize her. My mother is her.
The polluting plastic tide has gotten a little higher on Accra as the night settles. However, Bamfo claims to have found dignity in the conflict to prevent it.
She claims, “It is important work we do.” “Sometimes, I feel very sorry and disappointed that I didn’t receive the education I wanted.” However, we clean the city. That is what I think.
Source: Aljazeera
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