Strength

Yesterday we went to a community called “la choleca,” which has about 24,000 people (1,200 families) living in and off the dump in Managua. Try to think for a moment about what that could look like in the US. We have all seen “trash pickers” who take furniture off peoples’ lawns or looking for scrap metal to turn in for money, and maybe once in your life you have seen someone dig recently thrown away food out of the trash to eat, but you could not even imagine a community of people living off the rest of the city’s trash.

As we pull into the entrance of the dump there are a few men at the sides of the street looking through the little bit of trash there, we were told it is usually full of trash but today was an empty day. We continue driving down the dirt road and in the distance you can see the piles of trash in the dump. We don’t get a very clear view of the size of the dump, but we saw enough. There were many people at the gate of the dump going through trash, pulling out anything from plastic bottles, plastic bags, metal, copper, aluminum, paper, food, bones, and toys. There are children from the ages of 2 and up walking around and seeing what they can find too. This was the hardest part to see – very small children, in dirty clothes, with dirty faces, looking through a small pile of trash on the street for something to eat or play with.

People there work very hard, but don’t get much for that work. Today, for every 100lbs of plastic bottles you get 1 cordoba, which is equal to 5 cents. It used to be 24 cordobas ($1.20) but with the falling economy, the price for plastic dropped.

We kept driving into the community where there are houses. This is the section of people who live off the dump, but not in the dump. About 200 of the families actually live inside the dump. Our guide Yamileth, was a single mother, with two daughters, who lived in the dump.
She told us her and her children slept in a barrel.

Yamileth collected copper, metal, and of course food. The hardest part for her, especially in telling the story, was her concern for her two girls. She did not want them to grow up living in the dump. Yamileth looked for a job outside of the dump and finally found one packaging art, which is across town from the dump. She traveled everyday to work, but heard from other women who worked there in the past, that the job did not lead you to anything more than packing. She took this as a challenge to prove herself and show that she was different. Yamileth came up with a way to package the art so that it would not break; kids said they could play soccer with the art after she was done with it, and it still wouldn’t break.

Because of her hard work, Yamileth was slowly moving up the ranks and now is the director of this packing business. She told us that at first it was scary because she didn’t know what to do with all this new money she was making. Then she began building her home now, which she calls a palace. For those of you in the US who think you have a small room to live in, I bet your room is the size of Yamileth’s house. She is so grateful to have a floor and walls, with “the softest beds,” and some electricity.

Yamileth’s story does not stop there. She has become a community organizer also. She is the unofficial pharmacy of the community, where people who are sick can come to her home, day or night, to see what is wrong with them. Yamileth has a box she showed us, which is about 12 inches by 4 inches, and has a few medical supplies in it: hydration packets, blood sampling kit, and the drugs for malaria.

Along with that, she also took the lead in fixing the gang problem in their community. In the beginning 90s there was a lot of violence that came with the gangs, so to the women of the community decided to try and stop it. After the asking the kids what would help them, they said respect and sports. So, Yamileth was elected to be in charge of organizing soccer (having never played in her life). In order to play, all of the kids had to hand in their weapons: guns, slingshots, and knives. Yamileth tells a story about the first soccer game played in the new league where two kids ran into each other which started a uproar of the crowd. The kids, who were supposed to turn in their weapons, took out more. The police that were there were scared and Yamileth said she didn’t know what to do. She thought about running, but decided that she needed to do something more. She said she just screamed, “What are you doing? Is this what you brought me all this way for?” All the kids got quiet, then turned to each other and said she was right and started shaking hands. Since then there haven’t been any more gangs in the community and the one neighborhood was so good at soccer that they won many tournaments outside of their league.

Yamileth’s story was very moving. She started living in a dump with her two children, and even when she made the money to get out of the dump, she stayed and helped the community. It is hard to describe what we saw and felt on this trip; it is almost unbelievable, or incomprehensible for anyone who has not seen it themselves. The experience made me think about what I, and most people in the US, complain about. It is a day and place I will never forget.

Adios,
Britt