This is just going to be a short post. It’s about Zambia’s use and love of plastic bags. Or plastics as they refer to them.
I had never really used a plastic bag for much more than as a bag to carry food or objects. Here I have found a great number of uses! I’m sure I will discover some more before the end of my year here but here are some of the ones I have already seen. They are used to carry food or shopping items even if you only have one thing. They are used as a rain hat to keep hair dry, to cover up drain pipes to stop creatures getting in, to block a pipe in a tap to disable it and stop it leaking, to insulate open live wires, to light a brazier if you don’t have any lighter fluid, to kill cockroaches with flaming bags in the end of a stick, to act as a latch on a door, as a bin bag and to grease baking dishes. There have been more but not many of them come to mind now.
There is a huge use of plastic here especially the plastic bags. All sellers have plastic bags to put your item(s) in. whether it be a supermarket, a small stall or a street food seller. The result is that there is a lot of plastic bags in the environment. There is a distinct lack of public use bins so many just drop plastic bags and other plastic as soon as they have finished with it. This means the countryside is often littered with plastic bags.
The thing with being in a developing country where people are struggling to survive is that they don’t have much care for the environment as they have more things to worry about like finding money for food and surviving. It means that if something is cheap and has lots of packaging people will buy it instead of buying something with less packaging. With lower levels of education many of the people in Zambia don’t realise that plastic waste can be a big problem.
Having said that the supermarkets in Chipata have started to put in measures to curb plastic bag usage. Chopppies our favourite supermarket has started only selling reusable bags instead of free plastic ones being used. And the spar make you pay for plastic bags on a Wednesday so things are moving forward.
Jack in Zambia 
That was so interesting Jack. Like most people theses days we very seldom use plastic bags , not only because we have to pay for them , but more importantly we are aware of the damage they can cause to the environment in general and to sea creatures in particular when they end up in our oceans. But I can see they can also be very useful and are obviously used in many ingenious ways! I love hearing about your life so many miles away and the challenges you are meeting and dealing so well with – I am sure your experiences will shape your life in future and will be helpful to you in your future career in medicine. With love and all best wishes , from Beryl and John xx
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