Media Lessons

What it involves: Cleaning up crime scenes, road accidents and suicides. Clearing hoarders’ houses full of rubbish, rats and excrement … among other things. “The job is about keeping people safe,” says Richard Lewis, a hygiene technician for Ren-tokil. “We deal with some very disturbingly dirty sites.” Typical salary: The entry-level salary is usually around 14,500 and a top salary can be up to 22,000. Worst part of the job: Cleaning up after suicides. “You get used to the job being disgusting but the emotional side of it is still hard.” You learn not to take your work home with you, he says. “You also need to have a sense of humour, as some days can be tough.” Job satisfaction: Lewis finds the variety of tasks exciting. “One day, I’m cleaning up after a dead body; another day, I’m in a prison cell or 100 feet in the air being lowered down into a silo to clean it.” He also takes pride in the transformation he brings about: “It’s satisfying to return a potentially hazardous site back to a safe environment. And it benefits society.” 3. Biogas engineer The job: Setting up biogas plants in developing countries. What it involves: Linking a system of digesters — which can be filled with human excrement, animal dung and other waste products — to toilets to produce a biogas that can be used for cooking and lighting. “You have to know what size and shape the mixing pit needs to be, how to create the optimum temperature for digestion and where to situate the biogas plant,” says Ba-buram Paudel, chief technical officer in Nepal for the charity Renewable World. “You also have to convince poor communities that poo can be productive — many are repelled by the idea of connecting their toilets to their kitchens.” Typical salary: An entry-level salary is around 10,000, while a typical salary for a chief technical officer is .30,000. Worst part of the job: For Paudel, it’s seeing people strug-gling to surv...