The dump. I’d heard of it before, of course — it’s one of the many stories that Rachel uses to pitch her Living Stones projects in Brazil. Its stickiness factor lies in the shock of it, so it always remained in the back of my mind. But before today, they were all just words.
“There are kids living at the dump, rummaging through garbage to pick out scraps of recyclables, pieces of cardboard piled in a bundle to sell. Their parents work for less than half the national average salary–lucky if they make 150USD a month.”
Sure I felt bad for them, but these were just words. Statistics.
***
On the back of a moto, I flew towards the outskirts of Carpina, a city in Northeast Brazil of 80,000 inhabitants. We rounded the corner that opened into a driving school, and a few moments later, dirt paths lined with garbage indicated our descent into the dump.
The smell came first. I thought about all the trash bags in bins beside the toilets, holding dirty tissue paper and who knows what else. The plastic bags I’m seeing everywhere now contain rotting fruit peels and discarded toiletries. Bloody hospital waste. Vomit. Strewn for miles in all directions, decomposing and stinking, exacerbated by the Brazilian heat.
All of Carpina’s daily waste is brought to this dump and overturned onto the waiting arms of desperately needy workers.
I met these workers today. They didn’t wear masks or gloves or boots. They couldn’t afford these. Do they even know about the danger?
Their soiled faces, wrinkled and dark from the sun, squinted into a smile as I zoomed past.
We eventually stopped in the residential area, mere steps from the open-air dump. Rachel was already off her moto, tousling the kids’ hair, and making them giggle. I hesitated. I couldn’t help but think about disease and germs and cleanliness and I kicked myself for not having enough love for them. Rachel's people come every week to visit these children, to play with them, to feed them, to teach them, to remind them that they are not trash, forgotten by society. Why is my heart not there? Why is this fear of getting dirty suddenly rising and holding me back?
But I couldn’t process it all then. The kids have already noticed my arrival and are staring at me curiously, excitedly; their mothers tiredly looking on at the scrambling chaos from the sanctuary of their small houses.
Rachel introduces me in a string of rapid Portuguese, which by now I’ve heard enough of to understand: “This is my friend, Jackson, who I want you to meet. He’s from China!”
I plaster a big smile on my face as these kids beam brilliantly at me with their big chocolate eyes and adorably missing teeth. I try the handshake, but it dissolves into a hug as they move closer. Again, I felt the rush of shameful repulsion – their sticky hands were just picking through toilet paper, their bodies are covered in the slime of the dump. But as I look into their faces, their gigantic grins and dancing eyes, I keep my own smile plastered on and mutter the few words of Portuguese I know, tousling the kids’ hair and poking their sides.
Rachel gets up to show me a bit of the neighbourhood: a house made completely of garbage here, a tragic story of respiratory disease there. She asks the kids to stay with their moms, but they follow us nonetheless – a little boy grabs my hand and leads the way to a shoddy shelter with a tin roof, where they hold their weekly gatherings. Another boy brings along his most prized possession: a yellow bicycle with peeling paint and the chain falling off, probably the discarded toy of some other kid in Carpina. With his helmet resting lopsided on his head, he poses for a picture.
I guiltily take out my DSLR – it’s a luxurious burgundy, and all the kids clamor to touch it. Rachel pulls a boy off of me, telling him he can’t take the picture and that the camera belongs to Jackson—but he persists, making shutter noises and moving his head close. He was also the one who took me by the hand. He’s my favorite, I decide, and I feel a little bad about not letting him handle the machine.
We bring the kids back to their moms, where I take pictures of Rachel with the kids before she asks to take pictures of me.
In all the pictures, I am smiling too wide. It’s a stark contrast to the plight of the kids, wearing only underwear that don’t even fit, and swarmed with flies. Much too soon, I left the dump, throwing one last glance over my shoulder at the plumes of black smoke rising from the ashes of burning trash. Not even 10 minutes later, mansions appear on both sides in Carpina. A boardwalk with patterned tiles glitters, lined with joggers in the afternoon sun. Not even 10 minutes down the road there are fellow Brazilians living a life the dump kids will only dream about.
I felt horrible. I hated the way I was repulsed by the dirty hands and the snot-covered faces. I hated how I spent less than half an hour there, brought out my fancy camera, took some pictures, and then whizzed away on my moto, never to see them again like I was some entitled tourist peeking into their impoverished lives so I can write a story about it afterward. I hated that I couldn’t do anything—that the difference between my being there and them being there was just, as Bono puts it, “an accident in latitude”.
20% of the world live in extreme poverty, a friend pointed out to me that afternoon. That’s one in every five people. How terrifyingly startling.
She told me the first time is always startling.
“It’s good to feel this way, because it shows you have a soul. Return to see it again,” she urges me. “Maybe not here exactly, but everyone needs to see this extreme poverty.”
I peeked into the lives of some real people today. People, just like you and me, who were simply born under different circumstances. Souls attached to bodies in different places. There was a connection, a realization that they were exactly like me but simply living elsewhere. That scared me, and I reacted in fear and disgust. But really, we’re not all that different, the children of the dump and I.
“It is startling how, sometimes, we must first be brave in order to be kind.” – Asad Chishti
I wasn’t brave enough that day. But I’m hoping to return one day and by then, I’m hoping I will be.
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