So it finally rained in Jeddah. Such a relief. At last we felt drops of water on our faces and saw them on the thirsty yellowing trees in the street. Yes, rain is beautiful; it brings a fresh sense of earth and a smell of plants, even if they are scarce.
Even in the Kingdom’s dry deserts, plants spring to life as soon as those drops from heaven touch them. OK, so much for dreamy thoughts and idealistic images of rain.
We are, after all, in Jeddah. It rains once a year and the streets are flooded for days after the event. Though this year I have to say the municipality was quick and most streets were cleared of the water fairly rapidly.
For those who do not live in posh areas, however, some streets are still messy; standing water offers a home for mosquitoes and other insects as well as diseases.
If you are driving on the highway toward Briman, there is a distinct smell hovering in the air — the unmistakeable smell of garbage.
The smell is in fact always there, but the rain accentuates it and it becomes stronger. It is a daily reminder of promises given by officials in the newspapers that heaps of trash in this area will be taken away. But promises are as seasonal as the rain in Jeddah; they come once a year, fill our papers and then disappear.
Residents in the areas near the smelly garbage complain every time the odors come through their windows, reminding them that they do not live in one of the city’s important areas where problems somehow get solved immediately.
For some of them opening a window brings in a bad smell so they always keep their windows closed. But what happens when they are on the streets? The smell attacks them.
If we are waiting for a magic wand to get rid of this giant garbage bin, then we might as well close our windows forever.
It seems that like other chronic problems in Jeddah, people have to learn to live with them.
Just as with bumps on the roads, people instinctively learn to drive away from them; with the swamps of stagnant water in some of our streets, people just look and drive the other way. If this is what we are expected to do — always look the other way — then one day that “other way” will force us to look at it. At that moment, of course, there will be no other way to look. What then? At least once couldn’t we address one of our never-ending problems.
Now I said “address” the problem, rather than appoint a committee to study it. It takes only one step forward and things will start to change.
