Today we visited some new villages, the first being one that consists of 450 families living beside the trash dump for Chinandega. We took a rode in that resembled a river bottom, it was full of muddy dirty excrement filled water, puddles, small lakes that made me glad we were in a big truck, trash everywhere, the road running along a huge cemetery… at the end we come into a field and are greeted by a boy running toward us sniffing glue, the typical plastic bottle in his hand, held up to his mouth every 10 or 15 seconds, hands are burned badly on this guy, his make shift bandage job is half on and half stuck to the burn sores. His eyes can barely focus, he runs… then in a daze… slows down…his brain is struggling to hold the original idea that made him run, he tries again, gains ground and then that was that… bottle back up… standing in the middle of the road in a high… eyelids half closed.
We continued up and down the different streets in this community, naked kids everywhere, covered in dirt from head to toe, their faces are just covered in dirt, genitalia covered in dirt. The homes are just a room, walls are nothing but cardboard and plastic, some with metal. The rainy season starts here in about a month, that’s when it get bad here, the plastic homes just leak, the metal ones can hang on in the heavier winds but each year is an unknown.
We come to the end of this road and just as we pull to a stop the truck passes the last house…and then you see the dump… all the trash of Chinandega… in a 12 acre pile…at least 40 feet deep from what I could see looking down at the river below from the edge… I immediately head down the dirtiest of hills, I feel my heart pulling me, I have to see this with my own eyes, I can make out people in the distance, burning piles here and there, my feet are covered in dirt instantly as I begin my trek. I walk very very carefully, checking every step of my feet, there are needles, glass, metals everywhere. I’m glad I bring hardly anything with me when we head out because the dump and the village are very dangerous places. The camera that gets pulled out to innocently capture a photo for later is enough money to feed this family for year. No exaggeration.
I walk up to a young man standing between two deep holes dug straight down, only at the last minute to I notice a friend of his in each, that’s how deep they are, dug straight down into the garbage, one shovel at a time, one swing of the pick at a time. Earlier in the day I purposely did not eat some cookies that were given to me as a gift and when I shared why I didn’t eat them with some of my teammates, to pass them forward to someone who needed them, shortly I had 4 more packs. I had no idea I’d been giving them out in this difficult a situation. God did.
I ask Francisco his name, how many hours a day he does this? All hours the sun is up, he replies. I ask how many days a week? He laughs strongly.. Todos..! (All!) We discuss what he’s looking for and the current price for the metals and plastics, etc. He stutters every so often, most likely from abuse of glue.. it’s a stutter of the mind more than a speech impediment. He almost looked surprised when I asked him his name.
I threw him a pack of cookies and another down to one of his friends in the hole. He was grateful and in Spanish thanked me from his heart and commented on my heart for being there. There is not a lot you can say but what I can do is ask about him and his life because he is important and I want him to know that. I told him he would be in my prayers and kept my eyes locked on his with my hands over my heart long after I was done speaking.
Further I walked and found the most shocking scene yet, a 12 foot deep crevice carved out of this mountain of trash, you realized it’s a mountain when you look down and see the bottom of the channel running along side the dump, I’m standing 30-40 feet up. To my right is a river of pure excrement feeding that channel, there are 3 kids that look to be about 5-7 years old, one woman and her very little girl, and 3 or 4 men. They are standing in the flow of excrement with circular magnets in their hands, running them back and forth, when pulled up they are dense with metals, quickly his hand sweeps the find off and thrown directly into an old coffee can. The other men are shoveling the walls of this crevice into the water above their partner.
We can only look down and process. I take more cookies out of my pocket and toss them down to the various pairs of eyes looking up at me from below, they open them and share, and back into their motions they go. Gratitude is in their eyes as a second glance comes back up to me.
