Plastic and Worms

From my volunteer experiences the past two summers, I witnessed that there is little to no plastic used with food and drink products in India. The beverages -- Cokes included -- are in large glass bottles at your neighborhood store, which are returned to be refilled. If you buy food from any vendors, it’s handed to you on dried leaf plates and bowls, which are thrown onto the street once you’ve finished.

In fact, all trash is thrown onto the street. There are no trashcans. Instead, there are sweepers who whisk all of the dirtied leaves and other rubbage into piles on street corners. The packs of wild dogs, sacred cows who roam freely, and neighborhood crows then eat through the piles, resulting in “natural” composting.

Plastic bottles are thus precious items. Any time I’d finished a bottled water, a rare find, I’d have 5-6 people asking me for it. Plastic bags are equally as cherished. Some of the school kids would show up to class with their books in bags that looked as old as they were.

In Mali, things are different. There is a lot of plastic...but in miniature. At the fruit and vegetable market, your fresh papayas and avocados are handed to you in tiny black plastic bags. When you’re a weak-stomached Westerner looking for bottled water, you have to settle for plastic-bagged water that looks just as tempting to drink as to launch as a water balloon.

Not only used as storage, these mini plastic bags can also be used as drinking vehicles.

A few days ago at the women’s association meeting, the vice president brought me a taste of three different juices she’d made for me. They were each tied up into little plastic bags that I figured you were supposed to pour into a glass, but she stood there waiting. She then whipped one that she had packed for herself, palmed it, and took a tiny bite of the plastic on the corner. With the right grip, you can drink straight out of the plastic bag without spilling.

During the Espagne/Allemagne match of the World Cup, a friend had bought us “degue” packets/natural yogurt with millet balls, for dinner. As practiced a few days earlier, I took a quick bite out of the plastic, and started sucking my dinner down. Hand-held dinner is perfect during intense World Cup times.

Degue before -- locked and in position:

Degue after:

This morning after our regular Saturday walk around Bamako, we bought a few frozen popsicle bags. Bite then slurp.

You get the drift.

While the mini plastic bags are easily accessible, the larger plastic bags are nowhere to be found. Through make-shift packing techniques, I unknowingly/luckily brought a few big ones from the states, and have been using my favorite one -- the biggest and most sturdy -- as my lunch bag every day.

Friday, I packed a few items in my trusty bag, including a mango that seemed to be aging a bit. Its bruised spot had busted open a tad in the bag, but I thought nothing of it. In the states, that kind of thing would happen with bananas in bag lunches all the time.

When I sat down to have my lunch, a few small white specks flew out of my wonder-bag. Upon close inspection, I realized these specks were crawling around in a worm-like fashion.

WORMY LARVAE! Either from mistakenly letting my bag get dirty, or worse, straight from the mango.

It was a sad, sad day.

I had to throw away my prized plastic bag, and spent the rest of the day wondering if similar white specks had been hiding in the mango I’d eaten the day before.