I’m not sure exactly what to call this woman, so The Trash Lady will have to do for now. Every day our two (yes, we still have two!) dumpsters are piled high with trash, often overflowing onto the ground. Almost every day now the garbage truck comes. With mechanical “arms and hands,” the truck grabs hold of each dumpster, one at a time, lifts it up and dumps most of the garbage into the top of the truck. Most of the garbage – the rest gets strewn all over the ground and in the roadway. The main reason this happens is because the garbage is piled so high in the dumpster that as the arms lift it up and turn the dumpster toward the truck, a great deal of the pile immediately falls off – before it is positioned over the hole in the top of the truck.
Well, that is life here in Kherson. At least we have two dumpsters now and at least we have a garbage truck that comes almost every day. These alone are things to be thankful for and rejoice over. But this thanks is for The Trash Lady.
Early in the morning a middle-aged woman arrives, broom in hand. Her broom is made of small sticks and broken branches tied to the end of a long pole. In the summer she is dressed in a dress with a lightweight housecoat covering it, wearing socks and thick soled flip-flops or slippers. In the fall she wears a heavier housecoat (I’m not sure what else to call it – these were very popular for housewives when I was a little girl in the late ‘50’s and early ‘60’s), heavy wool stockings and heavier slippers. Yes, slippers. These are not typical clogs, etc., but house slippers that you give your guests when they arrive and take off their shoes. This is what she works in all day. (In the winter she will wear boots.)
Trash Lady spends a couple hours sweeping everything. She sweeps under all of the trees, around the bushes, all of the sidewalk, the street, the dirt areas between the street and the walkway near the building – everything. She piles it up into small piles here and there, then grabs her “dust pan” and scoops it up in a swift and practiced motion using both her foot and the broom. Then she carries it to the dumpster and deposits it there (I like her dustpan, it has a handle about two feet long so she does not have to bend over all the way). As the dumpster fills, she takes a heavy stick and pounds the garbage into the dumpster, breaking glass jars, smashing boxes and crushing plastic bottles. Sometimes she will spend ten minutes on each dumpster, pounding and smashing, compacting it more firmly. Trash Lady will take large candy boxes or a thrown out toilet seat, or maybe some Styrofoam or other large piece of trash and push it in around the edge to make the dumpster taller on the side that tilts toward the ground when the truck picks it up. I’ve watched her from the window and from the balcony and she really does have all of this down to a science, using as few movements as possible to do the most work.
Autumn is here now and leaves are everywhere. Her job has become harder. Each morning she arrives and sweeps everything up into piles. Now, however, she must separate the real trash from the leaves. I am amazed at how people just throw stuff on the ground (we were told once – this way the street cleaners will have something to do. Sigh). Trash Lady piles up huge pile of leaves after huge pile of leaves. Several days in a row, the piles grow bigger and bigger. Soon a tractor pulling an open wagon will arrive and (usually) two men will shovel all of the leaves into the wagon while a third man stomps them down by foot so more can be piled in. Sometimes Trash Lady is part of the group. Then she has a big woven plastic ground cloth that she lays on the ground beside the pile, sweeps the leaves onto it, folds the corners together and then lugs it to the wagon. The men help her lift it up and the man inside the wagon empties it. Sometimes it’s a big canvas bag, but often it is the plastic ground cloth that is used.
After the garbage truck comes and goes, there is always garbage scattered everywhere. Most days Trash Lady returns and begins her work all over. This time, however, she only picks up what the truck has scattered, replacing it in the dumpster.
Trash Lady has a mostly thankless job. She works in harsh conditions – hot and humid summer days, cold and humid winter days. Sometimes she argues with the neighbors, sometimes she laughs with them. Sometimes she chases the same dogs and cats out of the dumpsters over and over again (they are hungry street animals). I admire this woman. She is probably paid pennies each day, and maybe she is not paid at all some times. Yet, she continues her job, working harder than most American women work. If she did not do this job, our street in front of our flat and three floors down would soon look like a dump. How do I know this? I know this because Trash Lady was not always here. She has been working our area for only a couple years. I well remember what it looked like before.
I am very thankful for Trash Lady. She makes living here a lot more pleasant than it would be otherwise!
