Trash

Today we visited an NGO called Aziza's Place which serves the children who live in the sqatter communities which have formed at the trash dump. The organization provides housing, food, medical care, education, and activities for these children 5 days a week; they go home to their families during the weekend. These people live in the dump, literally ontop of piles and piles of trash because, in some way, they make money there. People collect recyclables that can be redeemed and find any other crap that can be turned into some kind of source of income.

It was truly apalling. These people are living in garbage, piles of trash. All of our steps felt as if they were done on gymnastic mats because the trash that made up the ground below was so spongy. The odor at the dump/village reminded me of a pig stable, but with many more added aromas. Allison (one of the directors at Aziza's) told us that people have found corpses and open/used syringes there because the hospital uses that site to dump as well. It was quite a new experience. We left feeling the dirtiest we have ever felt. I cannot even begin to imagine living in a situation like that. The small make-shift huts we saw were swarming with flies, all the food we saw was similarly speckled black with insects, there were animals shuffling through the swampy trash, and chilren were playing all around--most without shoes, many without clothes. I have a pretty strong stomach, yet I had to fight my gag reflex quite a few times.

Here's an interesting experience that occurred right in the beginning of our trash village walk... We had to jump across a gooey trash/sludge pile in order to continue on our path (on the sides was just more sludge/trash). So, Michelle steps up to take a leap. She takes a step back in order to gain momentum and we hear a loud pop. I looked down and realized that what made the pop was a dead rat. A rat that she stepped on, causing the intestines to explode out of its body. Luckily only two people got rat goo on them and no one was too upset. I laughed.... yes, not the nicest thing (I apologized while laughing of course), but that's the second animal that we've experienced pop (back in Siem Reap we were chasing a frog in the road, and ended up chasing him into oncoming traffic. Of course he stopped right in the path of a moto and was splatted).

Anyway, it's really great that Aziza is reaching out to these children so that they can have better futures with education, hygiene, and nutrition. (I tried to post some pictures, but I think they were too big for the connection... and yes, I do have the one of the rat...)