On Visting the Chimeltenango Dump

 

  I should start out by explaining that I'm in Guatemala covering the opening of The God's Child Project Casa Jackson Hospital for Malnourished Children. While I'm here, I'll be doing some stories for KFYR-TV. The first one has to do with homelessness and the way people struggle here to feed their kids. Sometimes they fall short, and that's when GCP steps in.

    Getting from place to place in Guatemala is an adventure. Public transportation comes in the form of a brightly-painted bus (the so-called chicken bus),

 a tuk tuk (a three-wheeled motorcycle covered in a tarp)

 or an open truck with metal framing on the sides to  provide handholds for people who ride standing up, which I did. 

There I was, speeding down the highway with my hair flying, the other cars whizzing by, close enough to touch. It's a mountainous road, as are most here, and passing is perilous. Not that it stops anybody.The guy standing in the  back of the truck yells down to the driver when he thinks it's safe to pass. It's the ultimate trust exercise. 

(copy and paste this url if it doesn't open and you want to see video of the dump)

https://www.facebook.com/MonicaHannan/posts/10212337828509214?notif_t=like&notif_id=1491057047468949

     Our destination was the  dump in Chimeltenango. Like most dumps, you can smell it long before  you see it. Burning garbage smells the same the world over. But here, the blowing dust combines with the smoke. We spy a woman raking the trash on a hillside very near the flames. My guide, Heneo, approaches the woman to ask if we can interview her. She agrees and my photographer Javier and I trek through the smoke. Her sharply-lined face is covered in soot, her eyes are red-rimmed with irritation and she appears to be in her late fifties or even sixties. She tells me she is 34 years old, the mother of five, the oldest  of whom is 21. I see two small children playing at the bottom of the land-fill, hiding under the shade of a tree. I assume they are hers. She says, with Heneo interpreting, that her husband died leaving her with no way to  make a living, so she and her children spend their day sifting for recyclables. They earn about a dollar a day. As she tells me this, tears track a black trail down her face as she asks for help. I ask where she lives and she points to a cave carved into the side of a hill not ten feet away.There is a young woman sitting there, holding an infant who they say is about nine months old. The baby's  face is also covered with grime, but he does not open his eyes or even stir. The girl tells  me the baby is sick with a cough. It's not hard to see why, as the two of them are in the direct path of the smoke. We hand them money and turn to go. Immediately, the mother heads back down the hill to continue her raking. 

    Half of the population of Guatemala is living in poverty. For 25 percent that poverty is extreme. Offering money may fill an immediate need, but the real answer is education. It's important for this woman's children to go to school. Getting them there is the goal of The God's Child Project.