Friday, October 7, 2011

Sharing chemicals

Between the fumigations here (truck driving around spraying chemicals in the air toward your home that contain diesel) and people dumping chemicals in the sewers (which come directly into your house), I CAN'T BREATHE!  Ugh!!  I woke up this morning and opened my bathroom door which faces the back patio and I was overwhelmed by a cloud of fumes.  It was weird how it was only in my bathroom and hadn't seeped into my bedroom yet, but I guess my bathroom has a window to the back patio (and a curtain that apparently trapped the smell inside) and it has a large drain directly connected to the sewer so the fumes were able to come in, but where could they go?  I opened up the door and turned the fan on higher to dilute the smell, but I could not go back to bed.  Double ugh!!  When my host mom came out of the bathroom out in the back patio, I asked her what the smell was and she asked "what smell?"  You know, the overwhelming gasoline smell???  Oh, she says.  They did fumigate in the area... and, apparently the car shop nearby has been pouring car oils into the sewer and I guess this is pretty common.  Hmmm.  That's not safe considering the poor sewer system here and that all the tubes go straight up into everybody's homes, forcing chemicals on them.  I guess it can't be extremely toxic since nobody has dropped dead in the streets during the fogging, but it makes it difficult to breathe.  I remember walking through the outdoor market as a fogging was taking place and the man fogging was wearing a big gas mask but spraying directly into the little shops.  People were coughing a lot.  Does this also contaminate the food they are selling?  All the exposed grains, beans, etc.

Glad I'm leaving for the weekend...

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