Rubbish Mountain. I have been pondering this blog for about
2 weeks now. Really there are no words to describe my time there but I will
try.
We come to a halt across from a small building and a woman
wearing flip flops comes out to greet us. She is the pastor of the church at
rubbish mountain and is our guide today. We start to walk through houses built
on stilts and round a corner seeing rubbish mountain for the first time. A
large hill of trash masked in smoke from the burning garbage looms in the not so
far distance.
Once on top of the mountain we see at least 100 people
milling around sifting through garbage looking for items they can sale. Trucks
of fresh garbage roll by making the cement we are walking on shake and rattle.
They come to a halt at the end of road and start to dump while a frenzy of
people tear through the new haul.
We turn around and I notice ‘houses’ on another hill. We are
told we are going to go and talk to the people who call this mound of trash
home. We walk up a hill and see 10-15 small homes made of wood, tarps and
Styrofoam. People actually live on
top of rubbish mountain. People who have names, faces, dreams, and stories of
their own. We met a guy named Sihn who has lived on rubbish mountain for 5 years and dreams to be an English teacher.
He is not liked and fears for his life daily simply because he talks to
foreigners when they come to see the area. He yearns to move off the mountain
but has no other way to make money. This is the plight of most of the people
who live on rubbish mountain. They have no other place to go and no other way
to make money.
As we leave the rubbish behind I have to many emotions
running through my mind to properly think, so I don’t. I return home, shower
and eat lunch. It is at lunch that someone asks me what I thought of the
morning. I break at this point. I have just seen people who will never know
what it is like to have a full stomach and will never know what it is like to
be clean and have new clothes on; all of which I have accomplished within 20
minutes of being home.
(dirt line just from walking around the mountain)
The residents of rubbish mountain have nothing and the only
thing I can offer them is the hope found in Jesus Christ. I cannot offer them
money or food or a place to live and that frustrates me but I guess I can only
be focused on their eternal well-being and not on their physical place.
