What a nation. What a damn ugly nation Malta can be sometimes. It has just been announced that in August alone, over 1,600 tonnes of rubbish – discarded mattresses, furniture, appliances and other garbage was dumped in our remaining valleys, arterial roads and industrial estates. The inspiring valleys surrounding Rabat and Bingemma Valley in Mgarr have been turned into an open-topped rubbish bin. Even the ancient woodlands of Wardija, one of the most beautiful and unique spots on this rock, have been dumped on as if it were an up-market Maghtab.

The proportions of this disgrace are quite astounding. Scattering 1,600 tonnes of garbage over this tiny rock in just one month is no joke. A car weighs about one tonne and a large truck around three. In other words, over the month of August alone, the citizens of this fair isle have dumped the equivalent of 1600 cars or about 530 trucks worth of bulky refuse over it.

The illegality of this abominable butchery of Malta’s countryside is neither here nor there. Rather, it is a matter of values or, rather, their lack. Faced with the 1600 tonnes of garbage, all the talk about Malta being the last bastion of real values in Europe is resoundingly hollow. What is truly and incomprehensibly shocking is that so many people have such a callous disregard for a land that is theirs, the country bequeathed to them by their forefathers and the one they will be passing on to their children. Do these people have no national pride whatsoever?

Then there are the financial costs. To clean the 1,600 tonnes of garbage dumped last month, you, the taxpayer, had to fork out Lm50,000. Since the beginning of this year the total cost will tot up to Lm340,000. At this rate, by the end of the year the figure will reach around half a million liri. That’s half a million liri of your money to subsidise the irresponsibility of a bunch of brain-dead men who treat the Maltese countryside as their private toilet.

Bad as all this is, it gets worse. In Malta we have a free – I repeat, free – service to dispose of bulky refuse. You just call 80076608 or email: [email protected], they come knock on your door and poof! away goes your dead washing machine or grandma’s rickety table. In many countries, much more advanced than ours, such a service is not provided by the government and, where it is, you have to pay for it.

Seen this light, the reason for dumping 1,600 tonnes of garbage around Malta’s countryside becomes even more perverse, almost completely unfathomable. Picture it: you are at home staring at a dead television set the size of a Soviet tank. You could make it conveniently disappear with just a call to the nice people at Customer Care Cleansing. And yet, there are men out there in such a situation who prefer to haul the damn thing to their car, drive to the countryside, haul it out again and dump it. Why, for God’s sake, why? What strain of moronic stupidity is this? Is there some unknown pleasure to be derived from making such an unnecessary effort to vomit dead household items on the environment? Could it be that we are dealing with a breed of pathological idiots who think they are getting back at someone or something in government?

I imagine Salvu ta’ Gebbed driving up to Wardija in the dead of night, his beat up old car barely making it up the hill. He parks in a secluded grove, a slight breeze bringing the sweet smell of pilchard to his nostrils. With the nonchalance of a killer in a Tarantino flick he dumps his mother in law’s World War II mattress right next to an olive three dating back to the time of the Knights.

I harbour a morbid fascination with the mental highways and byways of such men. Are these the sort who go to the airport waving a Maltese flag when our Eurovision singer returns the day after? Do their wives keep the settee tas-sala covered in plastic? When the time comes to dump the settee, do they remove the plastic or keep it for the next set? Are these the same guys who go hunting in a camouflage jacket, warriors against the evil ferocity of a 5cm bird?

Obsessive nationalism is certainly not my cup of tea. The path of genuine citizenship, of common and civil decency, remains the surest one towards better, more open and liberal societies. But when something as bad as this comes to light, rage in the name of the country is the only response that I am able to have. Despite European membership, the nastiness of some in our midst bobs up and down on the nation’s surface like a piece of faeces.

It is not the 1,600 tonnes of garbage dumped in our valleys and countryside lanes that should worry us. It is the garbage in people’s minds that should. Quite literally, garbage in, garbage out.

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