Food Waste
Few times he has seen the food table free of waste, after eating. And rarely has he come out of his home without carrying rubbish bags, to throw them in the municipality containers. Thus, he has stayed this way for long doing the same work, spontaneously and automatically without troubling himself to think of the accuracy of what he was doing. Just like a rigid machine doing its monotonous work, without understanding its nature.

One day and on his way to the garbage can, saw how the poor container suffering from concern and distress, in bearing homes leftovers. Until almost exploded by oppression for non ability to absorb such waste, which does not calm or stop even for one day. Or it has exploded, but nobody cares for it.

He was asking himself: Did our people in the past, do the same thing, we are doing now?! Or did they have their own way in disposing of waste?! His memory has taken him back to his childhood, when he was seven years old.

Then he was seeing the nomadic bedouin women, coming on the back of their camels. Loaded with different types of fabrics, clothing and food. They used to choose a vacant piece of land in their old neighborhood, to put on their saddlebags and distribute their goods. What was pleasing to him most from their different products, a special kind of food called (Egat)? It was productive female camel milk, dryer and cut into small rocks like pieces, for easy transportation and storage.

When he had been attracted by this kind of food, like the other children, he goes quickly crying to his mother and forces her to give him some money to buy it. Instead of giving him money, she used to give him some of dried pomegranate peels. Bothered he was to carry them to that nomadic woman, who in turn knew her role in this barter. She takes those peels from him, to give him some pieces of that dried milk. But the bedouin were not throwing them in the rubbish boxes as we do now, but they had used them to dye their clothes with the different colors they extract from them.

But when he had wanted to drink a fresh whole milk or butter milk, goes to his mother to fulfill his needs as usual. But this time she did not give him pomegranate peels, but food leftovers that remain on the table. Then he goes to one of the neighbors, who were raising various cattle of sheep and cows.

But that waste was not used for extracting dyes as the nomads do, but as a source of food for the animals. Given him in return a significant amount of fresh milk or butter milk. To go back home with an adequate amount sufficient for his entire family.

These are just memories of a father who was a child one day, did not understand the meaning of commercial swap. There may be other disposable ways which are not known to him, but known to those older in age and in experience. Thus, those wastes he does not know how to get rid of them now, were raw materials for other products in the past. And what he is misusing now and throwing in the garbage, destroying the appearance of our streets and landscape with, and annoying others by its smell, was source of food for the animal at that time.

Does time go back and make its round, so we know how to preserve the environment, and how to preserve food sources?! And use everything in its place, stop wasting and neglecting! Return to learn from our ancestors, who knew the right meaning of swap?!
Written by: Hussein Noah Mashamea – District of Qateif - Saudi Arabia husseinoah@yahoo.com