My husband calls just minutes after the Trafigura news reaches me from a colleague in London. "There is asbestos outside the school," he says. "I've spoken to them, they're having it disposed of. Can you check, later?"
Of course I agree. "It" is corrugated roofing material, white, old and toxic. I went to look. It is under a tree in the sun, flaking and broken and in the path of an easterly wind that blows towards our house.
"Having it disposed of" assumes there might be some municipal authority that will come in suits and masks to take it away. But asbestos worry hasn't reached these parts. I can make this statement with a small degree of authority because of a conversation with caretaker Jonas about the ironing board earlier this week.
"I can do the ironing" says Jonas, a muscular Ghanaian. "You can't", says my husband, a muscular Brit, "it has an asbestos hotplate". As much as I enjoy this homoerotic housewife chat, there is an important subtext. Jonas is a clever man but he has no idea about asbestosis. And nor do I, much, but that's because I've never had to deal with a potential cause. The locals don't because no one has told them, and they waft past the roofing in long skirts, sweeping up fibres into the sultry haze and moving about their business.
I check with the school later about the disposal. "It's all in hand" says the secretary, who dismisses me but shows no plans to follow it up. We walk home on the opposite side of the road, Magnus breathing through cupped hands.
An expert on the Trafigura tale says the level of toxic waste dumped in neighbouring Ivory Coast was enough to "bring a major city to its feet". A major city might have warned its people not to go outside and breathe the fumes that caused miscarriages and deaths, to work from home, to stop the transport system. I don't think that happened in Abidjan.
Do Africans care about rubbish dumps? I don't know. I queried Google. It said "Did you mean: do Americans care about rubbish dumps?"
On a day when Trafigura is top news, I didn't expect that. There's not much more I can say.
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