Being a Boudioumane in Mbeubeuss. An Ethnographic Perspective on Waste in Contemporary Senegal

This article presents some results of an ethnographic research project I am conducting at the Mbeubeuss dump, set up in the 1960s in the outskirts of Dakar (Senegal). Over the years, Mbeubeuss has given rise to socio-economic relations which are (directly and indirectly) caught up with the treatment of waste, thereby contributing significantly to the urbanization of neighboring municipalities and the consolidation of migratory inflows from the country’s rural areas. Moreover, since the 1960s, a community of boudioumane (waste-pickers) has lived and worked inside the landfill. In public representations at local and international levels, the Mbeubeuss dump is depicted as a closed world that unfolds parallel to the social context in which it is located; the informality of working practices at the dump are seen as corresponding to inevitable social, economic and political marginality. By analyzing the social stratification of a community of waste-pickers living and working in the landfill, I focus on the life and work trajectory of Badara Ngom, boudioumane associated with this dump site. Mbeubeuss represents both the cause of a long-lasting environmental crisis and the opportunity for many workers – such as Badara Ngom – to make a life for themselves, thus concealing its role in generating forms of vulnerability and normalizing the production of social inequalities.