As I've written here before, some of the things that we take for granted on the mainland - in the cities, at least - just don't happen on St. Thomas. One of these things is garbage pick-up. Now, some areas apparently do have pick-up service, because I've occasionally seen garbage trucks on the roads, but the majority of residents have to do their own trash disposal.
This is made relatively easy by the placement of dumpsters at regular intervals alongside the island roads. It's not pretty, and our guests usually think we're joking when we point these out to them and explain the purpose. Here is one site, complete with someone who just pulled up to drop off their trash:
This place usually has 5 - 8 chickens sitting on the edge of the dumpster and the fence, waiting for something appetizing to be dropped off. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get pictures of them.
At the large site below, you can see what happens when people dispose of items which they aren't supposed to leave at the dumpsters (computers, appliances, etc.):
Bob & I took advantage of the knowledge that lots of people leave those items anyway when we had 2 different small wine fridges that the continuous power surges & outages had fried. Bob placed the fridges near a tv that was sitting to the side of the dumpsters. When he drove to work the next morning, however, the tv was sitting alone - apparently someone thought they'd see if they could get the fridges to work :)
Our condos, however, have a great benefit: trash removal service. Monday thru Friday, we just put our trash bags on the front porch, and a friendly maintenance worker removes it. And if we need to dispose of something during the weekend? We are free to toss our trash into the bed of the pick-up truck that the maintenance men use. We love this perk that is available only at Cowpet East :)
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