The Anti-Smell
It's clearly been a minute since I updated. Shortly after my last post, I started grad school and the blog kind of got away from me. I'm still in school but on a break right now. This post has been floating around in my head pretty much since we moved it, but I've never been totally sure how to describe this sensory experience, so I just let it rattle around in there. There are a lot of interesting smells in Abuja. Most of them are the result of non-existent trash collection; there's no city trash. People who can pay private companies to collect do, and people who can't either abandon their trash or burn it. The community next to us fairly regularly burns their trash, and it is among the more awful smells I've experienced in my life, including other burning trash. There are also animal smells because goats, dogs, chickens, and cows roam the streets during the day and either hunker down or are collected by their owners at night. The cattle are nearly always wit...