Thursday, May 28, 2009

The trash is gone


This is how my roof looks now. Clean. Swept. Empty. But it used to look much different.
It used to be that there was a truck load of trash on the roof.

My apartment comes with a small storage room on the roof. For some reason, the landlords (or maybe other building residents) had filled it with trash.

?
It's a mystery.

Anyhow, some kabardi walleh (trash collectors) were hired to clean it all out and haul it all away. They were told they could keep anything the found inside, whatever value.
It was no problem getting them to empty the room onto the roof where they could see what was there and what they wanted. Getting them to come back and finish the job was another matter.
So this morning I began carrying it down to the neighborhood trash area myself. One bucket load at a time. I figured if I could make two or three such trips a day, I might have it done in a month.
As I dumped each new load onto the trash pile, the kabardi walleh watched me, told me which pile to dump it on. I told them I had more, lots more. And I showed them the pile of stuff.
We haggled over the price for a while and I continued to carry down one bucket full after another. Finally, it became ridiculous enough that I was doing the work when they could be earning money that they agreed to my price.
And we agreed: when you show me that it's all clean, then I hand you the money.

By the end of the day, they had carried it all away and even swept up the leftover dust. Nice. One less thing on my mind.

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