Every so often, there comes along an experience which you feel you not only should write about, but you must write about. An experience which changes you in such a way that you feel almost a moral obligation to express and share it. This post concerns such an experience. I have not posted because I’ve been in the Philippines the past 4 weeks volunteering to teach English at an elementary school. While there, I obviously had the privilege of seeing new things, meeting new people, and experiencing new situations. While there, I visited a landfill. This experience, above all, is what I feel I must write about.
This was not just any smelly, hot, dirty landfill (although it was all of those things), but a landfill where little children could be found, malnourished and hungry, picking through mounds of garbage, searching for aluminums, plastics, and glass to sell to the junkyard down the street. A landfill where huts were set up as “resting stations” to sit during the intense heat of the mid-day and break from the endless search. A landfill where children and adults, missing limbs because they reached a little too close to machinery, could be found, left to throw garbage as a form to play.
You see, in the Philippines, there is no “welfare”; there is no “unemployment”; there is no safety-net. When you lost your job, when you were poor, that was it. You were poor, and you survived the best (or the only) way that you could. For these families, that consisted of searching through the landfill day in and day out. Parents took their children out of school so that more sellable goods could be scavenged, more money made, and more food put on the table. Throughout my own life, I’ve never been wealthy. I’ve never had a lot of money, but I never once walked home from school wondering if food would be on the table. My mother lost her job last year, but I never feared being taken out of school, so that I could find a job to support a family. For some, this is their reality. At the dumpsite, I had the chance to see it up close. To talk to the children who worked the landfill, who played the landfill, who lived the landfill.
* * *
It was a cloudy, overcast day (thank-god, I can only imagine what this place feels like in the sun). Rain clouds threatened overhead, as we entered the premises. Sami stops and takes a look around. I watch her. A hole opens in front of us. A big, black hole filled with garbage and oozing methane gas, surrounded by majestic mountains and a calm lake. It’s a bit ironic, isn’t it? The landscape is so beautiful, I say. Sami gives me an awkward smile. We begin to walk.
At first, the children are stand-offish; they look at us strangely, perhaps a little afraid or ashamed, or perhaps just wondering who we were and what we were doing there. I look back, not quite sure what to say. What do you say to a child when you find them in a landfill? Hello? How are you? Can I have your picture? Do you speak English? I’m speechless and helpless, at a loss for words. I stand awkwardly as Sami reaches into her backpack and takes out a bag of fruit flavored lollipops. “Do you want some candy?” She asks, reaching out her hand to the children. They nod and walk over, sacks of trash not much smaller than them thrown over their shoulders. Their flip-flops are blackened with dirt, and their feet darkened, either from the sun or from the trash. Dirt streaks across their shirts and their chests. Flies swarm around us as we find out they are all about ten years old, and they have been here all day.
They smile, lollipops in mouth, as they pose for a picture. Suddenly, a bulldozer drives by, and all the children and adults are in a flourish. They scramble to pick up their bags and their sacks and their baskets. The dozer moves slowly through the trash, moving aside the old to make room for the new. They scramble in around it, eager to find new treasures and see what is uncovered by the dozer. The more they find, the more they sell, the more they eat. I stand, amazed. Don’t get too close, I want to shout. Watch out! But they’re too far away, and there’s too much noise. There’s no use in yelling.
I turn away, unable to see or to watch. And all I see is mounds and mounds of trash. A tear trickles.
* * *
Sometimes, it takes seeing what life is like someplace else to appreciate what you have. The experience of seeing the dumpsite kids, seeing for an hour or so how they live and spend their hours, has awakened me to the reality of developing third world nations. I learned a lot of things in the Philippines, but perhaps the most important was perspective. We have a lot in this country that we take for granted, such as education and food. We feel entitled to it, but it’s not like that everywhere. In medical clinics, doctors would deliver babies bare handed from mothers who didn’t have the choice to use anesthetics. In the towns, 5th graders couldn’t do their homework because they had to come home from school and drive a pedicab to help support the family.
The volunteer organization I worked with, Volunteer for the Visayans, accepts donations for these and many other underprivileged and malnourished children. For only $300 a year, a child can attend school, receive money for supplies, and be provided with groceries every 2 weeks. I’m reaching out to you. We can make a difference in the life of a child. We can save one of these children from the dumpsite.
http://www.visayans.org/Dumpsite.cfm
I want to help out however I can :]