trash...

We visited the city dump today. And I realized, I don't think about trash as much as I should. A few years ago, when I visited Cuernavaca, they had run out of places to take the trash and so people were just piling it in the streets. Two weeks without the trucks that cart the waste away and the city almost couldn't function. That was one of the first times the reality of trash really hit me in the face, today was another.

And today it wasn't just about trash, it was about the trash people and the boy on the back of the bus.

Here, there are so few resources that some 160 families have made their homes inside the dump. They live on top of the smoking piles of waste and spend their days sifting through garbage for bottles, scrap metal, plastic bags, cans, anything they can sell to the intermediaries. Their children work with them; when they're young (3-4) they may sit watch over things collected, later on they begin sorting or searching. The woman we spoke with guessed that they make between 2 and 4 dollars a day and while they don't have to pay rent or transportation, many of these families only eat once a day.

It's an entire community, there on top of the trash; they have schools and food vendors that come in to sell to the collectors, and a small clinic that an NGO set up. And yet, many times of the year the flooding is bad enough that they can't leave the dump, there's just no way out. In the dry season they deal with fumes and smoke and fire that often engulfs much of the landfill.

And it really did hit me today, just smacked me upside the head. We drove around and saw it all through the windows of our air conditioned Toyota Cruzer and I felt myself detaching from the emotional windstorm inside. A long list of questions formed in my head (how did this start? what is the government doing about it? do most people here in the city know? what's the alternative? if they were offered one would they take it? etc.). I do this, I've realized, when I'm not sure how to process all of the grief and disbelief that gurgles in such situations; I turn to questions.

But the whole way through there was this little boy on the back of our bus. As soon as we entered the dump he ran after us and hopped on the back ladder, holding on to our bus with one hand and to his jar of glue with the other. At one point we tried to ditch him and he ran after us for blocks, tenacious as fuck (symbolism I wanted to ignore). He was inches from me; and suddenly my questions seemed grossly inadequate.

We stepped off the bus (I, a tad unwillingly, I'll admit) and the ugly got uglier. Garbage under our feet, smells I care not to remember, smoke burning our eyes and the little boy walks up and grabs me, continues asking for money. I felt so white, so privileged, so guilty, just standing there asking our guide questions. And then we got back onto the bus. And drove away.

And my questions surged again. Of course they are grossly inadequate but without them I'm not sure what to do. I won't stop asking them; at this point, I don't think I could. These people deserve answers or at least attempts at answers. Today it feels like attempts at questions are all I've got to offer. Hopefully attempts at answers are somewhere down the road.