“You don’t take care of yourself as well as you should. I was going home from Church with my sister. We took a cab and started the journey. There was a guy already in the cab so we greeted him(which he didn’t respond to as he was eating a banana) and got into the cab. On the right-hand side of the road which is the lane we were taking home, there’s this huge road construction up ahead so vehicles going that way would have to circumvent to the other side of the road and follow through till it was okay to switch to the appropriate lane.
We did that and as I was discussing with my sister, the guy stretched his hand, momentarily blocking my view and my face and then his banana peels came whooshing away from our side of the cab and outside the window. I was silent for a second, too stunned to continue with the conversation. My sister and I kept exchanging glances but we didn’t say a word. The man on the other hand whipped up his phone and started fiddling with it without a care in the world.
Luckily, he alighted a couple of minutes afterwards as he’d reached his stop and I couldn’t help blurting out the moment he was away. “So his house was nearby and he couldn’t even wait to fling his trash.” My sister shook her head and said it was all about orientation and some people just weren’t wired like we are not to do certain things. We talked about the concepts of littering and hygiene in general till we reached our stop.
In the same vein, I had a conversation with a few of my coursemates from school a few weeks back and the question was, “What’s your contribution to society?” What that meant was, what are the little things you do that may not exactly count but go a long way in improving our world? When it was my turn, I said that my contribution to society is that if I have trash with me, probably from a snack I ate or paper I no longer need, I would hold it with me like my life depends on it till I get home before I dispose of it the right way.
A few of them laughed and said that it didn’t count but I had to give them reasons why it did. I don’t just get it. My state has been awarded as the cleanest state in the country at least five times consecutively. On some days, I pass by some streets and I’m like, “Are you sure the committee in charge of that award checked everywhere?” I almost want to wonder how other states are.
But I do agree that most of the roads in my state are pretty clean. Which is why I wonder why a full-grown adult would see a road and decide to just get the place filthy with his trash. I mean whether or not that place is immaculate or littered with trash, I think it tells more about us as a people when we do what is right and dispose of trash properly.
It’s one trait that I’m glad I inculcated in my friends. Not littering the environment. There’s this sense of satisfaction I feel when I calmly dispose of items, do a little picking around my environment to ensure it’s free of waste, you know.... those kinds of things. It’s giving responsible woman. It’s giving woman that knows what she’s doing and works towards achieving her goals. I know it’s looking dramatic but leaving off the minimalist part, even as a person, we owe it to ourselves to inculcate lifestyles that would better ourselves and our environment as a whole.
Another major thing I do is planting. There was this thing in high school where if you plucked a fruit from the school gardens you were made to plant ten. Quite silly then, I know. But somehow it was a way of teaching us to embrace afforestation as a practical lifestyle. But besides that, planting different fruits and vegetables not only increases aeration in the environment but also fosters healthy eating habits. It’s a win-win.
I got back from school for a brief holiday and I got to see our garden at home. I haven’t gotten to taking pictures but I was glad to see that the rest of the family has been taking good care of it. The harmattan season doesn’t do well for most of these plants but they were green and flourishing meaning that they are being watered regularly.
I’d like to say that as long as we are in this world, we have no other choice but to treat it the way we would treat our own because that’s in fact what our environment is. We don’t have to do very grand things but we can do the little ones. Our little quota in bettering the world we live in.
Images are mine.
