Waste Not - Mottai nai

Just this last week, I got food from the school cafeteria for the first time in years. I was surprised to see them serve the leftovers from lunch or breakfast.

I left the village a long time ago to teach. I now live in Japan, where I teach junior engineers in training. They make projects with the SDGs—sustainable development goals—in mind. Thus, finding solutions to resource waste is paramount for the students. Preservation, conservation, and sensible use of resources are encapsulated in the Japanese phrase Motai nai—it means not to waste as doing so results in regret. I had heard this phrase used by Wangari Maathai, Nobel prize winner, who seemed to give it global popularity.

I smiled as I scooped generous helpings of eggs and spinach at dinner— once breakfast. That dish was “Bambye,” the Guyanese term for leftovers. I love Bambye!

I remembered that my mother’s stance on food waste had never wavered. She urged us to eat all our food, saying, “

Willful waste brings woeful want.
I must not throw upon the floor,
The bread I cannot eat, 
For many a-hungry little ones 
Would think it quite a treat!

As a Guyanese, she recited that little verse with the equally familiar vernacular:

“Wah duck a tek and bade ‘e skin fowl want am fuh drink.” (What a duck uses to bathe, a fowl wants to drink).

My mother never explained to me what the African-Guyanese proverb meant. She didn’t have to. As is customary, Guyanese proverbs are repeated often so their meanings become clear. Then, they tend to become embedded in children, growing in meaning and application over time. It’s the way of bearing the wisdom of the ancestors in oral traditions—how we carry wisdom in our bodies. That wisdom often becomes the cornerstone of your life principles.

In time, I would come to understand that the words of wisdom, “Wah duck a tek and bade ‘e skin fowl want am fuh drink,” meant that I should consider how I used resources. For example, that shoe that I mashed down to destroy so that I could get a new one would be welcomed by a child who went to school barefooted. There were such children in the village, and as many such circumstances to which a commitment to reduce waste applies.

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