Predictable Perspective

"Welcome to the S*** Show"

What hits first isn’t the heat, it’s the sight. The second you step off the plane, you see it.

How people handle waste. And how they don’t.

Before you even clear customs, the story starts writing itself, plastic tangled in brush, the remnants of once-burned garbage still melted into the sand, half-buried and overgrown with grass in the ditches outside what looks like homes but feels like survival. Bottles and Styrofoam catching sunlight like confetti of neglect, and just beyond them, small hands dig through what tourists tossed aside, pieces of plastic, half-hope, half-survival...

The environment doesn’t whisper; it screams: “I’m a mess. And you should see the end game.”

That’s what I walked into.

Different country. Same story.

Those of us who’ve been in this industry long enough, not by accident, not by default, but by passion, we can’t unsee it. We didn’t choose this line of work; it chose us, one landfill, one facility at a time. Somewhere between the first slipped track and the hundredth washed-out, rain-soaked shift, you stop cursing the weather and start becoming part of the storm. It became less of a job and more of a deep-rooted desire to keep people healthy, to keep communities safe, to keep the world functional, even when the world doesn’t notice.

So, when I landed in Belize, of course I couldn’t just mind my own business like a normal tourist and sit by the pool. Curiosity, more likely my calling, pulled me straight to the local transfer station. I wanted to see how our people were doing.

Not “my team.” Not “their operation.” Our people.

The ones who show up whether it’s 110 degrees or pouring sideways rain.

The ones who do the job that everyone depends on, but no one wants to understand.

So there I was, sandals, bright striped summer romper, hair pulled up in a half-panic bun, driving a golf cart that rattled like a blender over potholes. The air hit thick, salt, diesel, and that faint sour edge of rotting trash that clings to humidity. I rounded the last bend toward the island’s transfer station, the one that’s supposedly hauling waste to the mainland two or three times a week. It stopped me. Right there. A flood of everything hit all at once, awe, disbelief, sadness, anger, guilt, the kind that doesn’t wash off when you leave.

And there he was. One worker. No crew. No relief.

He looked up as I pulled in, not startled, not defensive, just this worn-out kind of cautious hope. The kind that comes from being forgotten long enough that even a stranger starts to look like salvation.

“Are you here to help me?” he asked. And that moment froze everything.

He didn’t ask who I was or where I came from. He didn’t ask for credentials or titles. He just knew. It's that silent kind of recognition between people who’ve been knee-deep in the same fight, carrying the same load for far too long.

It was the look. That first split-second exchange of understanding between two people who’ve both stood in the stench and still cared enough to keep standing. He saw it in my eyes before I said a word: that silent “I’m so sorry.”

And I saw it in his: “Thank God, someone finally sees me.”

I told him, softly, “I wish I was here to help.”

My eyes said it before my mouth could, I got you. Not in logistics or policy, but in the only way that matters, the soul sense. I didn’t know the how, but Lord knows, I knew the why.

Because that’s what happens when you’ve been here long enough, you start carrying the weight of every site you’ve ever visited. You remember the faces. The exhaustion. The quiet pride. The impossible asks. You feel that connection even when you can’t fix it.

As he walked me through, I took in what words couldn’t cover:

Waste piled beyond containment, spilling from the wide-open bays into the lot. Torn bags fluttered like defeated flags, the wind carrying them over puddles of murky "water" collecting in potholes carved deep into the sand. Vultures circled low, wings slicing through air heavy with the stench of hot plastic and decay. Inside the transfer building, the neglected waste still smoldered from old fires, thin ribbons of smoke curling up through warped tin and broken light, the smell of half-burned trash clinging to everything. The kind of heat that doesn’t just burn, it festers. This wasn’t neglect. It was a system on its knees.

And still, he showed up.

He’d done everything humanly possible to hold the line with what little he had. You could tell by the layout of the piles, the way he’d tried to carve order out of chaos. The kind of desperation that looks like discipline if you’ve ever done this work yourself.

This wasn’t his failure. This was abandonment.

A government contract switched hands. Budgets got paused. Relief “delayed.” But trash doesn’t wait. It stacks. It spreads. It becomes air, water, disease, shame, all while the people in charge sit in meetings saying, “We’re addressing it.”

No. He’s addressing it. Alone. And the world doesn’t even know his name.

This is what predictable looks like.

This is what perspective feels like when it comes from the ground up, not the boardroom down.

Those of us who’ve spent our lives in this work, we carry this knowing. We see the same patterns replay across borders, budgets, and bureaucracies. We know that when leadership vanishes, the frontlines still show up. We know that when the system fails, the people don’t.

It’s predictable because we’ve lived it.

It’s perspective because we still care enough to see it clearly.

I can’t be the only one who sees this. And maybe that’s the point.

Because if enough of us start calling it what it is, not “inefficiency,” not “underfunding,” but neglect, maybe the next time someone looks up from the middle of a mess and asks, “Are you here to help me?” the answer won’t have to be “I wish I was.”

Maybe it’ll be “Yes. And we’re here to stay.”

There’s a specific kind of exhaustion that doesn’t clock out. It’s not “I’m tired.” It’s not “what a long week.” It’s that stomach-drop, rage-laced, hollow-behind-the-eyes feeling you get when you roll into work and you already know you’re walking into failure, not because you failed, but because you’ve been set up to.

People on the outside don’t understand that feeling. They see “waste,” “sanitation,” “operations.” They think trucks, routes, landfills, contracts, invoices. Logistics.

What they don’t see is the human cost of a system that loves to say “essential,” right up until it’s time to actually be essential.

I can’t unsee it. And I don’t want to. Because pretending it isn’t there is exactly how we got here in the first place.