Trash in Dar es Salaam

Typical trashpile, Old Bagamoyo Rd in Mikocheni near mom's house

There's an episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets elected as Sanitation Commissioner and eventually, trash explodes out of every sewer, gutter, and orifice of Springfield. The situation here in Dar is not too different.

There are huge piles of trash along every ditch and open space in Dar. And the parts that don't have such piles have loosely strewn trash lining the dirt sidewalks. The trash isn't exactly the moist sticky disgusting kind. It's more the dry dusty eyesore kind.

I'm not exactly sure what the trash collection situation is here, but apparently a garbage collection system does exist. But no one I spoke to seemed to know exactly how it works. I once saw some men shoveling one of these random garbage piles into a truck. But as you can see, this system isn't working too well.