A Great Story

[mudgirl]

In light of the recent threads re police dumping their garbage, cultural differences, and whether gringos have the right to try to change things, I will share a great story I recently read on a Baja forum.

The poster said that there was a yard across the street from her, where a Mexican woman lived, that was always completely covered in garbage. Aside from the visual blight, all the garbage would constantly blow across the street into the poster´s yard. The neighbor´s daughter worked or owned the corner store. Poster asked the daughter one day to please ask her mom if it would be alright if she cleaned up her yard for her. Answer came back no. Thinking that maybe it was just that the neighbor didn´t want the poster in her yard, she then asked the daughter to please ask if perhaps she could pay someone of her mom´s choosing to do so. Answer came back no.

So one day, after picking up a huge amount of garbage from her own yard which had blown over, the poster just lost it, went and took a photo of the offending yard and put it up prominently in the neighborhood, with a caption underneath that said´"Is this really what we want our neighborhood to look like?". (By the way, this poster did not come across at all as being arrogant or expecting Mexico to be like wherever she came from, in fact stating "I still can´t believe I actually did this!")

Outcome? Couple days later the poster went outside and saw that the offending yard was SPOTLESS and has been maintained thus ever since. Furthermore, she and the neighbor woman have become quite friendly and now laugh about it.

Just thought it was a lovely and funny story.

[dichosalocura]

That is a really good story, it is so refreshing to hear happy stories after all the negativities and bitching that we hear on a daily basis.

[Guest bennie2]

what is the problem w/using garbage cans in general? why is it that some cultures dont mind garbage? the cambodians & vietnese tend to have this problem as well. not to get off topic, but it seems to be true in many cases.