.....it's the smell that hits you first .... and stays with you

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to visit a project organized by a former Peace Corps volunteer.

It’s located in nearby Quezon City. As the place is not easy to find, we met the volunteer at a nearby church. We transferred from our comfortable car to small truck converted to passenger use; it didn’t have much in the way of springs.

We traveled through a series of narrow back roads and couldn’t really see much in terms of where we were going. As we got nearer, the smell [stench] got stronger and stronger; we did notice small piles of plastic garbage bags piled along the road. Finally we arrived at the project site, the [in]famous Payatas garbage dump. It’s a small mountain now and from where we stopped you could see the top and trucks dumping their loads – and the scavengers eager to go through the load to see what could be salvaged and sold. It’s the scavengers’ way to make a living, to survive in an economy that has few legitimate jobs to offer them.

The project is a preschool with a nutrition component. I talked to a number of kids – thankfully I know enough Tagalog to be able to communicate with them.

“What do your parents do?” “Oh sir, they are scavengers.” I asked, “what will you do when you get older.” “Join them in scavenging.” Not much of a future to look forward to.

In spite of their living conditions, the kids are full of smiles and more than ready to give you the “high five” when we returned to our comfortable lives and homes. It’s a different world in which they live and I’ll try to remember it when I think I have a hard day.