The cost of your new flat screen

Lately, through my studies and as a result of simply looking out the window - it has started to dawn on me that those who pollute the least seem to have to live amongst the worst environmental conditions. It is just so bloody unfair.

Last night's Dateline on SBS exposed the growing trade in Ghana of the illegal disposal of international electronic waste. I must admit, this is something I have never thought about much. Living in a country like Australia, I simply assume that when I decide to upgrade my laptop, my old one gets recycled correctly by ... well ... someone else, who knows how to do it. But of course - I really have no idea where it goes.

The truth of the matter is that a percentage of disused computer monitors, hard drives, televisions and other electronic items from Australia somehow wind up in shipping containers bound for Ghana, where they are either repaired and resold (at least someone is bothering to do our recycling for us, properly), or burned if they cannot be reused. The toxic fumes and smoke from the waste yards is thick, dangerous, and unregulated. Kids rummage through the waste to resell whatever scrap metal they can. 

This is true globalisation.

Someone in the burbs gets a new flat screen TV, puts the old one out on the front lawn (someone else will deal with it for me), and unbeknownst to them - it is bound for Africa.

Forgive me for thinking that this is absolutely insane.

Something I found particularly distasteful was the honest admission from an Australian recycler that Australian charities are vulnerable to the illegal network of waste disposal. They receive a huge amount of unusable, broken electrics (thanks, citizens for confusing your local charity with the tip), and not being able to process/accept these things - take the first offer they receive from someone willing to take the stuff off their hands. 

Sometimes - the offer is from an illegal e-waste exporting network. We can hardly blame the charities.

Honestly, I don't know what the answer is. We are so entrenched in our culture that is very hard to shake up the individualistic paradigm. But shake it up, we must. Our households are not private secure spaces that belong only to us, they are filled with goods made somewhere else, and everything has a story. Our actions and choices have causal effects, rubbish may be out of sight (ours), but that doesn't mean it has actually been disposed of.

I was glad to hear that the Department of Environment has responded to this report by launching an investigation into how these goods are leaving Australia illegally. Australian Customs said they did not have the resources to undertake the necessary checks on all goods leaving Australia. Fair enough, but we seem to have no problem finding the resources to thoroughly scope out all goods coming into Australia (people, included). 'Not my problem' - at the highest level. 

http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/601347/n/E-Waste-Hell

I still call Australia (my grumpy, self-interested) home.

Recently I travelled back to Australia as a pregnant woman of eight months, with my soon-to-be-two year old and numerous pieces of luggage as my sole travelling companions. I had assumed that my waddle combined with her toddle were a clear enough cry for help for any onlooker at any of the many critical points in her transit.

Times appear to have changed …..

It was at our first customs queue that things began to look shaky. Smelling faintly of vomit (us both) and wearing my t-shirt back-to-front to overcome the waft, we waited desperately in the diplomatic line for the three Korean tourists in front of us to produce the third missing passport and write something, anything on their arrival cards. At this point, my little traveller decided to lie flat on the ground, chase the customs dog and run under all the security barriers. People stared. I restrained my child by holding her, along with three other bags. Ouch. Eventually we moved forward, and by this time I think I had seen our bag go around the carousel about seven times.

Interestingly as I approached our bag, a gentleman took it off the carousel and placed it near his trolley. I was about to thank him, before I realised he was actually going to take it. I got a luggage trolley and loaded up. He returned and asked very loudly what had happened to his bag. I said I had taken it, and then had to endure a ridiculous scenario of proving my ownership to him. He merely shrugged off my questions regarding how my baggage identifiers may have applied to him … I eventually showed him my name on the barcode and he grudgingly accepted it. There was no apology or even faint embarrassment on his part; I guess it was my fault.

I perched my kid where the handbags normally go in the luggage trolley and raced to the domestic check-in counter thinking we may somehow still get on our connecting flight which was leaving in 45 minutes. I showed the nice lady from Virgin with the cat’s bum face my itinerary and she declared with some disgust that she “couldn’t touch it”. WTF? I wasn't asking her to give it a remedial massage.

So off we went to the train to make our way to the domestic terminal, unaware of what our fate would be.

The next train was in 27 minutes …. needless to say we waved at our plane from the platform as it took off. I mumbled like a crazy woman at the inefficiency of Brisbane airport and wondered aloud how many people had paid five bucks to miss their plane, like we just had.

I somehow managed to get my kid, the pram, our suitcase and other miscellaneous bags off the train and headed to the lift as fast as was pregnantly possible under the circumstances. Many people with no foreseeable need for lift-use pushed in front of me and headed down to the ground floor with their single suitcase and lazy ass, as I stood and waited. I was simply in their way, and they had their bogan holidays to get to (yes, I said it).

At the Virgin service desk I started to cry. It had nothing to do with airports or missing my plane, but I was most certainly a mess. As a result, we got on the next flight for a very small cost and the ladies were awfully nice to me. During this transaction a citizen came in from the side i.e. not from the queue, and introduced herself as such; “Hello, I’m from New Zealand.” My tears almost turned to laughter, but my general anger/fury with the world at large pushed any feelings of amusement back down to where they came from. She told us that her niece was arriving tomorrow and she had no idea which gate to meet her at. As we waited for the rest of her story to unfold, we realised this was her story. I wondered, almost aloud how she even managed to leave her house today to get to the airport. As it turns out, she was making her enquiries with the wrong airline. Godspeed my friend, I suspect it will be a long and confusing road ahead.

On board, it was all the usual things, full plane, straddling strangers who preferred to stay seated, one airsick bag for two seats, a public scolding from the cabin crew for buying my kid a seat and requesting an infant seatbelt (apparently these are mutually exclusive, and therefore we didn’t get one), kid screaming because she could not sit on my lap, kid eventually throwing up again as the plane touched down. At least I was largely prepared that time, most went in the bag and only a little bit on the Virgin seats which I diligently cleaned up, before straddling the stranger next to me one last time, desperate to get off the plane. I may have hit him in the face with the nappy bag, but it was a spatial thing more than intentional.

At last, we were in Sydney. The big smoke, my old home – but now a confusing metropolis that moves too fast and makes a lot of noise. Last time I lived there I don’t even think we had the internet connected in our house, for instance. Anyway, we were directed to Bay 10 in the taxi queue, but I thought there must have been some kind of mistake so stood in Bay 9 as it was vacant. How wrong I was, I was yelled at and quickly moved to Bay 10 where a taxi van waited for us. My load was heavy and were both weak. I think the guy cottoned on to this and was awfully gentle on both of us. He lowered the ramp and told me to get on. I am not sure how/why what happened next did – but he raised it and we were hoisted into the taxi, as though too weak to simply walk in. It was hilarious. An able-bodied, emotionally wrought woman and her pram getting the hoist into a maxi taxi.

I arrived at my destination, burst into tears and got us both out of vomit-stained clothes. We’d made it.

Some days later, I had to travel again. I was not expecting anything nearly as inconvenient/arduous; it was just a simple Sydney-Brisbane flight. It’s been a while since I’ve been to the Qantas terminal at Sydney, but it looks more like a Mac outlet these days than an airline. Just lots of big open spaces, and people floating about checking in their luggage by retinal scan or some such thing. I desperately searched for a dated/vintage staff member to help me. After checking in the luggage, we went through security where the kid did her usual body flat-line on the floor while people pretended not to notice, and I took off items of clothing, got out the laptop etc etc. It was a blast! 


We went to a café, ordered a milkshake and sandwich, which required me to leave my child, computer, cash and bags unattended at numerous moments, as no-one could bring anything to my table; “sorry, we don’t do that”. We sat and drank and I attempted to give my lady some Panadol to help with her ears on the flight (doctor’s advice). After her screams and back arches, I managed to get her in a position where I could get some inside her mouth, she swallowed, sat up, and then threw up all over both of us. Just another plane ride really.

When it was time to board, we stood in the line. Various men on very important business calls came and stood alongside us … “hello, do we know each other?” before then proceeding ahead of us, as is their way. I became the crazy mumbling expectant mother again and declared that allocated seating simply was not enough assurance that we were going to get on the plane … we had to push in! As we got to the staff/boarding passes point, my lady flat-lined again on the ground. It’s her specialty at critical transit moments. As I was bending down with my three bags to pick her up, several more important businessmen passed us, and in order to do so – they had to STEP OVER HER, which they did. They stepped over her, as though she was a newspaper.

I had no recourse, and nor did I really want it. But when one offender was attempting to go against traffic on the plane to put a very large inconvenient box somewhere, my huge belly and nappy bag may have knocked him off course.

The stress! It was so nice to come back to PNG where everything is slow and unreliable and as a result, people are in no real hurry, do not mind helping strangers and smile. Everyone smiles. I wanted to hug the guy on the tarmac with the orange headphones as he gave us that uniquely PNGian nod/salute combo.

A strange feeling of familiarity and affection came over me yesterday as I walked in the baking hot sun with my family towards the terminal, past the Air Nuigini planes that were no doubt delayed by at least 1.5 hours, past the welcoming band that play the same songs on shedule for every flight (whether or not the flight actually arrives at that time), through to the short queue where the lady smiled and gave my kid a stamp on her hand.

I think it’s probably a first – but the slow tropical life with all of its bizarre characteristics felt more familiar to me than the hectic pace of grumpy Australia. 

A litte ray of sunshine

Pure happiness = walking around in the late afternoon with my lady, picking up freshly fallen mango and eating it straight away on the way home. The juice dripped all over her like rain. Her blatant refusal to eat any fresh fruit meant I didn't have to share.

In the gloomiest of times, it is so great the way kids force you to keep it real.

What a bloody mess.

It's a shame that Australia's asylum seeker policy has to be determined and managed by politicians. They have really ballsed it up. How do I know this? Because we have been having the same painful, tedious debate for ten years now. Our Parliament has been barking from one side to another the entire time, and where are we now? Yawn. Back to where we started.

What a waste of time. And money ... the waste of money is shameful.

The Year 6 class at your nearest school would probably do a better job coming up with ideas. Or your local beautician. How about the Big Cheese at Department of Immigration? He had a few ideas ... but then, what would he know? The Rotarians - they work well as a problem-solving team, they would probably come up with some handy approaches. Ask any taxi driver - they will have a thesis on the matter prepared in advance.

It seems the government is going about this in the wrong way. Both sides should just accept they are not up for the job, and contract the issue out. Award the tender to the loopiest possible candidate and watch this space. It could really not get much worse. In fact - they would probably come up with a multi-million dollar palm-off to impoverished nations as a 'deterrent' with the bulk of people ultimately being resettled in Australia ... if that idea was not already protected under political copyright.

It is cheaper and more efficient to process asylum seekers who land on Australian territory in Australia, yet this seems to be a political irrelevance.

High Court ruling getting you down? Just change the Migration Act.

If I hear Tones refer to 'Stopping the Boats' again ..... I am going to have to knock on his hard hat and point out that the only way he can really do this is by building a massive wall in the ocean. A domestic policy will not really do the trick.

Suspect rougher seas ahead for the disastrous journey of this little policy area. What a mess.

For my friend

So the day has come when I finally have to mourn you. Oh how that black bitch shadowed you for the 20 or so years of our friendship. She sometimes tortured you in ways we could all see, but I am sure her shadow was with you constantly. I don't know how you did it.

How did you manage to be so funny and warm and loyal and unbelievably generous? How did you do that with that shadow hanging around? Sometimes you were a little bit out there with your generosity, you would go over the top. I loved that about you. Sometimes you would do crazy shit. I loved that about you too (eventually). Sometimes you would close up and I couldn't find you for weeks. I hated that. I could never understand how it was easier for you to be alone. But then, I suppose I could never really understand what you were going through.

You were so many things to so so many people. This would sometimes really piss me off about you. Why did you run away from us? The ones who really knew you. But of course, sometimes it was probably so much easier for you to not be known. To be far away, where you could control how people saw you, and manage the blackness. You did it incredibly well, for so long. And now all I can think is that every day must have been hell. Were you always pretending it was okay? God, I hope some days were actually okay for you.

From primary school you have been in my world, and since high school you have been my friend. In school you were so naturally beautiful, it was infuriating. You look amazing in every photo I have ever seen of you, and it was effortless. I'm not sure if you ever saw this. Certainly, the guys did, everyone else's boyfriend did. God it was so annoying. You had the power my friend, it used to drive me crazy. Particularly the way you didn't seem to care. What a force you were!

And from high school when you used to be 'moody' somedays, we flowed into university and beyond. It was during those times that I learned you were not moody, you were sick. It was so scary the first time I realised this. I was scared as I didn't know what to do, I didn't know how to talk to you about this. I saw the cracks take form, they were so dark and deep and when you would fall into them your whole world slipped away from you, and hung in the balance, just waiting for you to come back.

I have waited for you to come back so many times.

Even so, I don't think I ever thought we would really lose you.

I was selfish. I wanted you to stay and hang on for me. I do not know or understand your pain, and I never have. Even when I came to the hospital, and we talked, and you had somehow managed to hang on - I thought that you would always be here. Even then, when you looked me in the eye and told me you didn't want to. I'm not sure if I really believed you, but I was touched by the balls of your honesty, because I know you never wanted me to see you like that.

And now, with the flick of a button we are in a different phase of our lives, and so many memories are 10 or 20 years old. So much has happened and changed, but in finding out that you are gone, it is as though no time has elapsed. I am right back in your world.

We always said it didn't matter whether we talked or not - we were rock solid and things would maintain themselves. It was only last week that I found myself wondering whether even you and I might have stretched the elastic out a bit too far, and that maybe it was time to let it go again and connect. I wish I called you, maybe I might have thrown a spanner in the works and kept the bitch at bay for a bit longer.

But that's only what I want. It's not what you wanted, I suppose. I hope.

To my beautiful beautiful, complex, wonderful, infuriating, dynamic, hilarious friend - may you now be free of the burdens of your sickness. May you be somewhere at peace, laughing and resting and finally feeling weightless and free of the blackness, maybe for the first time.

I'm sure it is a wonderful feeling for you.

And as for us - we will gather at your funeral and love you in the myriad ways people you have known loved you. Just know that you were incredible.

We miss you and the world will not be the same anymore.