Peru's rubbish-tip children

[Judi Lynn]

Peru's rubbish-tip children

When the G8 meets tomorrow, there will be the usual talk of the plight of the developing world. But it won't mean much to the Peruvian children who scavenge a living from the country's rubbish tips. As Johann Hari discovered when he witnessed the squalor and suffering at first hand, their best hope lies elsewhere
Published: 14 July 2006

I - The Lives of the Rubbish-Children

Thirty-five miles north of Lima, Peru's dusty, lusty capital city, the rubbish of nine million people is dumped in a vast valley. I stand at its entrance watching the trucks arrive and leave, trying not to breathe in the stench of everyday household waste as it gently rots. A constant black writhe of flies covers every moist surface. Skinny dogs wander around with proprietorial confidence, snarling at fat English strangers. (OK, me.) And the children who live in these great glaciers of rubbish are silently picking through it, as they do all day, every day, searching for something to sell.

"Señor, it is not safe to enter the dump," I am advised. This is, notoriously, where Peru's criminals come when they want to get lost, a no man's land beyond the remit of the police. But on the inside it is strangely silent, as children sift and crawl with stern concentration. My guide wants me to meet Adelina, one of the child workers who lives and toils here. We walk through a maze of rubbish - I try not to look at the bloated black rats I have been warned about - until we come to a space fenced off with large rusting metal sheets and other cobbled-together trash. I bang on the metal and wait. Eventually a sheet is pulled back, and the sound of oinking emerges from behind a little girl.

Adelina is eight but from her small frame it's hard to believe it. She has dried scraps of something around her mouth and a soiled dress that I am later told is her best, the one she dressed up in specially to meet the gringo journalist. I step in, on to a crunchy carpet of rubbish. There are old rubber ducks black with dirt, detergent containers, hair curlers, rotting food, broken bottles coating the floor. The pen is filled with little pigs and geese and chickens, with the "house" - another few steel sheets - at the back.

Her mother is out. She is always out. She leaves at six o'clock in the morning to work in the next dump down - it's too busy here - and doesn't get back until after Adelina is asleep. The child explains that her own job is to peel the bottle labels off and put them in a sack. They, too, can be used. As for her father, he left long ago. "I see him sometimes but he doesn't want me to talk to him." There is no running water here. They have to buy it in expensive barrels from a water man who comes once a week. It stands in the corner, open, with a thick film of dirt and dead insects on its surface. There is no sewage system either. They throw their faeces out in the rubbish, where other children slip in it. I ask her how often she eats. "Twice a day," she says, unconvincingly, adding, "I don't like to eat every much anyway." She quickly changes the subject by trying to pick up a filthy-white goose from her Noah's Ark for me to stroke.
(snip/...)

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1174429.ece

[casual hex]

1. This is intensely disturbing

It defies belief.

[Poll_Blind]

2. Oh god that was a disturbing but equally-worthwhile read. Thank you! n/t

PB

[OwnedByFerrets]

3. What a

fucked up world we live in. :cry:

[mzteris]

4. gee

ya think maybe the untold billions we spent on killing Iraqi children could have been used to save some of these children instead?

[n2doc]

5. Even in Lima it is pretty heartbreaking

I have been there several times and int the poorer sections there are always little kids, sometimes 2-3 years old, trying to sell stuff in the middle of the streets. The poverty is godawfull there.
It is amazing when you get to the back country, even though the people are still really poor, they are much better off living off farms and the land (this is in the north east part over the Andes. The ones in the cities get stuck there and can't/won't move even though it is hell on earth.

[mntleo2]

6. This Is The Heritage Foundation's Dream World For America

... where children labor from the age of 2 and the parents die before they are 30 and rich people's garbage is our home. As along as it enriches somebody else, who gives a damn about the millions who are starving right under their nose???

God I hate these people!

Cat In Seattle

[castiron]

7. And how long before our own landfills attract garbage-pickers?

I imagine we'll need to pick out the recyclables we've thrown away at some point.

[I Have A Dream]

8. Heartbreaking!

:cry:

[Pachamama]

9. I have seen this place outside Lima...its awful...The shacks around the

area without any running water & no sewage system and piles and piles of waste with children running around it. When I spent time in Peru both in the Andes and Amazon and would start my journeys from Lima but also spend time driving around, I was appalled when I saw this. The other thing I found so appalling (aside from the oil waste pits in the Amazon left by US and British Oil companies) were the mining operations in the Andes and the conditions that not only the environment is left in, but the chemicals and mercury and other toxic substances that are everywhere and how people and children live in it....all while American companies who own these mining operations profiteer. I remember seeing what was apparantely once a beautiful lake in the mountains become a copper color with green algae growing on it and realizing this was once peoples drinking water and its now a toxic soup.

:cry:

[Judi Lynn]

10. I'd love to have knowledge of the countries you've seen in Latin America

and yet I am so sorry that what you have seen in some of those areas exists.

It's a hideous shame our industrialists have been able to have corrupted leaders and raped the countries, and deeply harmed the citizens in so many, many ways, while maintaining a squeaky clean image in the public eye back at home.

They should be compelled to atone and heal the damage as much as possible, but it doesn't look likely.

[wickerwoman]

11. I think I've seen it too...

I remember riding the bus out of Lima up into the mountains and all along the side of the road are shacks made out of corrigated iron. There are all these little streams emptying into the sea and you can see naked women in the river trying to wash the only piece of clothing they own. It's absolutely the most abject poverty I've ever seen first hand.