The Masaya Dump

by Peter Christopher, October 1, 2008

The thread reminds me of the Masaya Dump. I interviewed an NGO worker in Masaya who was working with the dump and the city composting program (in other words he Was the city composting program). This was about four years ago. He took me on a tour of the dump. The entire entrance road into the dump was piled up with garbage. What had happened? A prominent local politicuan had borrowed the bulldozer, and rented it out to put some extra cash in his own pocket (nothing unusual). Hence, the garbage trucks just had to dump their refuse further and further away from the actual landfill. Dengue rates got higher and higher. Bummer for those poor souls who lived near the dump and market.

Fyl's comment ("Marketing:. That's the difference between Nicaragua and Costa Rica...") is a typical example of the systematic misinformation that he posts on the nicaliving.com website that he owns (and that he posts on other websites). A basic library-literate junior high school student can check a variety of online sources and quickly recognize that Costa Rica has better drinking water quality, fecal treatment, and waste (garbage) management. Any person who has visited the two countries can see the same thing with his own eyes. If he chooses to drink the water in both countries, he quickly learns that the Costa Rican water doesn't give him quite the same "cleansing." (You rarely get the runs or dysentery drinking Costa Rican tap water, spring water, or even mountain stream water, but you often do in Nicaragua from any of those sources.)

Of course, this doesn't mean that Nicaragua is a worse place to live. There are some charms about living in Nicaragua. But the Nicaraguan experience will be more fully appreciated by arrivals having expectations properly in line with reality.