The rubbish dump

So I asked my amazing couch surfing host, Byrom, if I could see some really poor districts of the city.(Tegucigalpa) I wouldn't go there on my own because it could be a risk. But with Byrom, as long as he knew someone there, it would be fine. 

As it happened he had a friend, Pastor John, ran a school by a rubbish dump, an area run by the Mara's, the gangs (allegedly because no one would talk about it), who charged the local people money to work there. Recently the woman running the dump was killed, allegedly, so now it's a bit more free. God knows why the gangs bothered though I mean these people picked up rubbish and sold it on for 1 limpira per pound of plastics or cardboard. Most people might make average of $10 a week! It's literally the worse job you could ever have. Full-stop. I'll never complain about my work again. Pastor John said they called it work out of respect, but really it was nothing more than surving...

The smell of the place was literally over powering, it stank like a mixture of smelly feet, all encompassing, permeating your clothes so that if you left a trace of the rubbish dump on you, like mud on your shoes, the stink followed you around. It was full of packs of wild dogs drinking from filthy puddles eating the trash and hundreds of vultures circling overhead and feeding on anything, literally a cess-pit of humanity with the poorest, unluckiest in society sifting through the shit.

Some of the people there have worked there for 40 years, since they were young children. We met one women whose daughter had died at age 8 because she had been picking up rubbish and one of the dumps and a truck had run her over! And we met another women who told us when one of her husbands died, the police said they'd investigate, but nothing ever happened. 

I felt slightly at risk taking pictures of the rubbish dump because people could have stolen my phone but I think no one cared enough or were too busy to bother, it wasn't like there were gangs standing around with guns pointing them at people, not at all...

The same women had another daughter, who looked about 14. She would spend half the day at school (at Pastor John's Rubbish Dump school) and the other working on the dump picking up and sorting out rubbish. If it wasn't for the school the cycle of poverty would never be broken as all the children of the rubbish dump parents would never have the education to aspire to be anything else than just rubbish pickers.

The rubbish dump school was pretty amazing in itself. Pastor John had spent the last 15 years building it. Apparently he had turned up at the place and seen the dump and his daughter had told him what are you going to do about it? So him and his family lived on the dump and with the people and started teaching them. And then over the years with donations and things they'd built the school. It's a pretty amazing life achievement really:

The rubbish dump school, funded now by the American Embassy, literally started out in a field under a tree

The school was also expanding into growing their own fish, and plants to feed the people. They gave the local children who came to the school breakfast, lunch and dinner and school uniforms. But most importantly an education. It really is all about education. You take it for granted when you are a child, or an adult from the western world, but without that basic education to read and write and imagine a life better for yourself you really have nothing. I think you can solve almost all the issues of poverty if you educate people.

The only thing I felt uncomfortable with at the school, that made me happy they didn't need me to teach there, was this over emphasis on God. Like at the rubbish dump Pastor John made us all stand around, put our hands on this family, who'd just told us their sad life story, and pray. People were saying things like  how unfair it is if God suffered so much on the cross that they needed to suffer too.(proof enough there is no God) Pastor John even asked a woman what she would say to Christ if he was standing infront of her? She said a better job. 

Pastor John also talked about compassion and pity, and how we had to show compassion and not just pity for these people to make ourselves feel better. So why did he seem so uninterested in me helping and teaching? I just feel going there, handing out food (like Jesus in th bible) and praying for them was slightly too pious? Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, it was good we gave the people something to eat atleast.

I don't know why the whole God thing made me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps because it felt like it was a bit of a requirement to believe in God before they were interested in working with anyone and I felt left out. It wasn't like this in Matagalpa, the NGOs took your help if you offered it.