Cleaning up after the Sahara

The sun was veiled; the sky was amber yellow; the spring snow was the colour of cinnamon and curry. At Easter 2024, Switzerland was blessed with 180,000 tonnes of dust from the Sahara. Meteorologists waxed in fascination about the imposing quantity of the mineral substance falling all over the country and lending it bright Easter colours.

In the meantime, Mathilda M. from Schwarzenburg, who had just cleaned her windows, saw them grow cloudy again and thought of a practical question, which she ended up putting to Askforce: “Who is actually responsible for cleaning up when so much dust comes into the country?” She knows from experience that dust will sooner or later end up in the home. Theoretically, the Easter cloud could have covered every square metre in Switzerland with 400 grams of Sahara dust. 

Would the country remain dust-free and thus cleaner if the borders were more tightly controlled? We are not accusing Mathilda M. of holding this view, but we still need to address the topic of migration. When a tiny, immaculate fleck of Sahara dust falls to earth in the Alps, it feels, to a certain extent, like it is coming home. It senses how African the Matterhorn is, and tries to remember what it was like when the African continental plate smashed into the Eurasian plate and drove it up into a wedge. The little fleck of dust might even wonder as a result: “Was the ground on which I’m falling once the ground where I came from?” 

If we can derive a natural right to remain on geological grounds for a falling speck of dust, this would be 1. a momentous sign for immigration policy; and 2. the trigger for a heated debate on the issue of what the concept of home soil can even mean over a broader time period. Therefore, Mathilda, sand in Switzerland is a taboo subject. The question of cleaning up after the Sahara is left deliberately unanswered.

The Sahara dust enters, gets stirred up... and is discreetly swept under the carpet. Recently, the enormous quantities involved have made this a Herculean task. You can’t have too many people involved. Otherwise, the cleaning campaign is no longer discreet. Too many people are not even suitable for the job at all. After all, the task costs a hell of a lot. The vacuum dust filters alone would require the cleaning giant – even when acting very discreetly – to come up with 14 million Swiss francs. And that’s an optimistic estimate! 

This is a secret and we must therefore keep it to ourselves: there is only one cleaning expert in the country who meets the profile and has enough cash available. Sergio Ermotti. Head of the major bank UBS. His 2023 salary of 14.4 million francs sheds a whole new light on the dust issue. Ermotti is probably not the fattest corporate cat, but he’s certainly good at hoovering up the crumbs. He’s made a career of it! Now, who’s still complaining about the Easter dust cloud?

Original article of this column: Leaving everyone behind in a cloud of dust