*This blog was written by my mom during her experience at the Parent Vision Trip*
I hate Trash Day. I hate everything about it. I don’t like gathering the trash from all the wastebaskets. I don’t like putting in new liners. I don’t like the nasty garbage juice the trash truck dribbles in our cul-de-sac on Trash Day. I certainly don’t like the unwieldy rolling bin the city has issued. (I have a dent in my SUV from the time it got away from me on the hill and careened into the fender.) I reminisce about the good old days when you could set out items for heavy trash pick-up and they would take them along with any number of bags set on the curb. All of this and I’m not even the one in our household that usually deals with the trash, but I’m not going to complain about our trash service anymore.
Not long ago I had the opportunity to join Julie in Nicaragua for a week long Parent Vision Trip with the World Race. It’s been seven months since her squad launched, and she still has another four months to go, but oh, what a week it was serving beside her! The PVT is designed to give parents a glimpse at what the racers experience. I am under no misguided impression that their day-to-day ministry is much harder and more heart-wrenching.
I wanted to work with children. I know how to work with children. I figured I could connect with children even across the language barrier. Working with children would be comfortable. Opportunities for growth rarely happen within your comfort zone however. Julie, her team and I were assigned to two ministries on our first day; the Dump and a Prayer Walk. I had no idea what this would entail. We knew we were going to be working at a feed. I thought that the Dump was some sort of euphemistic term for dumping or showering a bunch of food on a plate for some hungry folks. As our air conditioned tour bus bumbled off the main road the sudden realization that, “No they really mean THE DUMP” dawned. The heaping mounds of refuse and the pungent air were confirmation enough.
We pulled to a stop, got out, looked around (no food, no kitchen, no tables in sight) and were greeted by a stench so powerful I can still smell it when I recall the memories of that morning. We were told to go and talk to the people; the people who work at the dump-the people that live at the dump. We split off into small teams and wandered to the perimeter which seemed, well, less dumpy. Then for all intents and purposes, we trespassed. We crawled under a barbed wire fence and essentially into a family’s front yard. Imagine three shacks made from slat boards and corrugated tin, no lawn, just dry, dusty dirt. We greeted a woman sitting on a hammock with her baby and young child. She looked at us rather suspiciously even though we were not at all threatening looking. I suppose that is the look you get when a group of white women disregard the barbed wire. Soon her father makes his way to us, equally curious as to why we were there. (Then again, maybe they are used to foreigners showing up at the dump.) The translators were busy with other groups so we managed with the poco Spanish we knew. With the help of a Spanish translation app we tried our best to talk with the little boy about his interests, and asked the grandfather what fruit was growing on the nearby tree. We thought they were kumquats. He leaves us for a moment, and then returns with a two liter bottle with the bottom cut off, edges notched, inverted and fastened to a long pole. He proceeds to use his innovative kumquat-catcher to harvest kumquats. To show us they are alright to eat, he demonstrates by taking a bite and then offering us one. In a flash, I think “these grow in dump air, with dump dust and maybe they have worms and when was the last time he washed?” but in all that, the greater offense would be to not accept his gift. They weren’t bad, kind of sour, but they aren’t kumquats either. Later, back in the States I discovered they are jocotes. The grandfather sent us home with half a backpack full of jocotes. From so little, he gave what he had, and overlooked our trespass.
Shortly after, the food truck arrived giving me back my comfort and sense of purpose. We set up a six foot serving table and unloaded tortillas, 56 quart storage totes of rice, beans and another regional dish along with a cooler of fruit juice. We served the people, these people:
In Nicaragua, a flatbed truck with side slats is privately owned. The city pays the driver/owner about the equivalent of five dollars a day to collect the trash from the curb. It is the truck owners’ responsibility to compensate the men who work on the truck. By the time the garbage gets to the dump, the trash-pickers have been through it on the streets, the trash men have been through it at pickup, then finally those who live and work at the dump go through it again searching for any remaining recyclables. Those who work on the truck jump down from their perch on the heaping trash, most of which is packed in the truck, not neatly contained in Hefty bags. The intergenerational families greet the trucks and rake the refuse from the flat beds once the slats are removed. Each new truck stirs the stench and alerts the flock of vultures, pack of dogs (more feral than not) and the cattle. The cows manage the heap like mountain goats. How they got there, I can only speculate. As the trash is emptied off the truck, the dogs and the vultures find the organic bits, and soon entrails are strung out between the two and whoever has the best grip wins. I study the hierarchy of food chain, and the sociology of this community. I wonder, wouldn’t I be of better use if I had a rake too? I feel like a useless spy to their misfortune. Once the trucks leave, families begin searching for recyclables and carry their finds to their family’s personal stash heap. Five or six days a week, the trash is collected and brought to the dump. Each family agrees to a certain day for their haul, maintaining respect for the process and their finds. Later, the recyclable purchaser will come to the dump to make an offer. They will exist on less than $20.00 a month, some say feeling cursed by God for their lot in life.
They come to the serving line, tired, hot, filthy and hungry. Before the meal, there is a message of hope, prayers and an offer of salvation, for which some accept. A handful of people bring cans with lids reminiscent of coffee cans before companies went plastic. I assume it is so they can both eat in the moment and save some for later. We fill those cans. Others eat and drink from the plastic plates provided by the mission. It’s a large group on this day. We run out of clean plates and cups, but they don’t mind using someone else’s. We tear open the ice bags cooling the juice, diluting it, but making it go further. We split tortillas because something is better than nothing. I want to keep my eyes down because the last thing I want to see is the look of a hungry face as I have to say, “No mas.” A few have had the fore thought to get the last bits of food for a loved one coming in on a later truck. I start stacking up cups, busying myself from the nagging question, “When do they eat again?” I turn to talk to someone from our group, and one of the women we have served picks up my hand, holds it for a moment and I squeeze back. No words to say anything, but everything said in that gesture.
Finally, our time at the dump comes to an end. We board the air conditioned bus likely never to return to an experience that is their daily life. The lady sitting across the aisle asks me, “How was that for you?” What kind of question is that? How do I respond to my fascination at the horror of such abject poverty? “How was that for you?” Unfathomable. “How was that for you?” Oddly beautiful. “How was that for you?” Awful. “How was that for you?” Heart-wrenching. “How was that for you?” Moving. “How was that for you?” Humbling. “How was that for you?” I am still processing…
