There are some things that we closely associate with poverty, and one of those things is a part of our ministry time here in Puerto Barrios.
Pastor Ronnie, who works closely with Casa Verde as well as overseeing his church, goes out once a week to the city dump to meet with and pray for the people who work there.
Now, when I say people who work there I do not mean people who are employed by the government to oversee a sanitary facility, working reasonable hours for a fair wage whilst wearing suitable clothing and living far away.
Watch this video (which also include photos from another ministry we're doing – the children's hospital) that my team mate Dusty made to see what I'm actually referring to:
The city dump is basically just an assigned piece of land where the dump trucks literally just dump stuff in piles. Amongst large numbers of dogs, pigs and even vultures working their way through the trash to find things to eat, are people who sort through it for things to sell. They look for plastic, aluminium and cardboard that can be recycled and is bought from them by other trucks which turn up regularly to pick up what has been scavanged.
To me it doesn't sound too bad in theory – look for recyclable materials. That's good right? We're all behind that? But as you can see, this is not a sanitary facility. These people live in the shacks that you can see off to the sides of the dump (they literally live at the dump); they have no special clothes for the job, only the clothes they wear the rest of the time; they have no place to wash their hands before eating; they have no gloves as they search through piles of waste that include (this makes me sick) the used toilet paper from people's houses (since it cannot be flushed away here); they do not get an hourly rate, only what they get from selling what they find, which I would wager is not very much at all.
Amongst this group is not, as some might expect, the down and outs, those who have hit rock bottom due to drink or drugs or something else that could be argued to be their own fault. As we went around praying with people Andrea and I met two girls who could not have been older than 14, and Dusty and some of the others prayed with a boy who was only 4 years old but this is the life that he knows with his parents.
What disgusts me is not only that these are a deplorable living conditions (shocking as you can see they are), but the simple fact that this setting even exists at all our world. With all of the resources and wealth there are why are there still people having to live like this?
