Ibrahima Faty has created his own waste and recycling facility. And his family lives right here, in the middle of smoke and gas from burning rubbish heaps.

A donkey loiters in front of a cart full of rubbish in the life-threatening traffic on the main street of Kafountine. Ibrahima is the municipality's only sanitation worker, and his donkey cart is the garbage truck. For a small sum a month, he collects waste from the busy market and the noisy main street. He can't live on that. But he has discovered a market; he collects rubbish from private households and has built his own reuse and recycling centre. And he lives here, with his wife and six children, four boys and two girls.

The smell is bad, and the smoke drifts over the plant. It sticks in the throat after a few minutes. It's good to watch where you put your foot, and you just want to get away, but the children and his wife don't seem to care.​ Between the smoking piles, everything is carefully sorted into sacks and piles; metal, cables, glass bottles, everything you can imagine from plastic products, car tyres, corrugated iron, machine parts, batteries. It is impressive what he has achieved. But even if a lot can be sold, most of it is burned.

Rough start​
He started by carrying fish ashore from the boats, on a contract basis, and when he had enough money he bought the donkey. In the end, he was able to buy the plot of land where he lives. He has been working for four years, and the donkey cart is a familiar sight in the city. He drives all day, loading, carrying and sorting. His wife washes bottles and jam jars that are sold to those who make and sell juice and jam, or petrol.

He calculates that a full trailer load yields about 5$ in profit. He earns a fraction of that per kilo of metal, converted into dollars.

– Yes, it's hard. People before me have given up, says Ibrahima.

Collaboration = win-win
And even though he works from morning to night, only a small fraction of the rubbish ends up here. ​The area had needed hundreds of Ibrahima's. The vast majority of waste in the municipality, including plastic, is buried or burned.

​Waste@Work collaborates with Ibrahima. He gives us plastic, and W@Work gives back metal and glass from the receptions we have built in the villages. We hope to expand this collaboration. Together, we hope to get the municipality involved in organizing the collection of rubbish and plastic.