El Climatorio (The Dump)

Our missionary friend Anna has been training new missionaries this week. We feel blessed to have been able to join them on some outings around the city. The first trip was to ASJ, an organization which works to right legal, workplace, and social injustices for those who otherwise don't have the resources to do so. On Thursday we visited a private school called Genesis in our neighborhood and also heard about its microloan projects to help poor people become self-sufficient by starting their own businesses.

Then, on Friday, we drove about an hour to visit Tegucigalpa's city dump. Words, even photos, cannot begin to describe this experience. It was utterly heart wrenching. We have never seen anything like it.... we were just stunned. Anybody has seen poor people dig through trash cans in the U.S. looking for food or something valuable and felt sorry for them. But this was so much different.




An amazing, amazing pastor named Jeony (pronounced Jayoni) met us to tell us about this place. Every day, 1,000 people, including 250 children, spend their day digging through the trash to make a living. Trash trucks roll in one after the other, and the people run up to them looking for anything of value. Kids climb all over them and hang on as they lift to dump their treasures (shown below). A pound of plastic will bring them 5 cents; a pound of paper a few pennies. So they spend all day collecting whatever they can, and later sell it to people who come to purchase it for recycling. Sometimes, they even race to beat the vultures (shown right) to a prize such as food. We saw one man eating really old pasta, probably trash from some restaurant. His eyes were glazed over as he stumbled over asking for water. The average worker makes about $2 to $3 a day and if they are lucky, they find food. They barely survive.





The people of the dump are filthy dirty. They must have grown immune to the stench which was acrid to our nasal passages. Although this guy, who worked there, seemed to have just as difficult of a time with it.


We were told that people work at the dump for years. When their children are old enough to help out, they are put to work; if they are too young, they play in the trash like it is a sandpile. Several will die every month from illnesses contracted there, or getting stuck with a disease-infected needle, or being run over by a truck or front end loader. Occasionally, as they sort through the trash, they find babies who are unwanted and thrown out; or mutilated, cut up body parts. By the age of 13, many young girls will have prostituted themselves right in the middle of the dump with men who come up there to prey on the vulnerable. Drug dealers go specifically to the dump to sell to desperate people. Many children are hooked on drugs at very young ages.

Pastor Jeony has come up to the dump almost every day for 7 years. He hands out water and sometimes food. Over time, he has gotten to know the people by name. He said that God has put these people on his heart because no one in the government seemed to care. He has sought government assistance to help the kids but said there has never been anything except staged photo-ops.

When his daughter was 5 years old, she told him that the kids should be able to go to school. And so, Jeony seized on his daughter's vision and started a school right in the dump. The kids would gather and sit on the trash to learn. But the government told him he could not conduct school there.

So, he and his wife took the kids down the hill and started to teach them beneath a tree. A few years ago, with the help of some other local churches and volunteers, a school was built. Today, about 150 kids go to school at the base of the dump. Sometimes, 12 year olds are mixed with 6 year olds in first grade, just depending on when they start. To the right, you see Pastor Jeony talking to one of his old students who continues to work in the dump every day.

Jeony has a goal to get all children out of the dump by 2010 by giving them an education and other opportunities. But it is a huge goal since parents can resist an education for their kids because they need them to sort through trash. To combat this, school runs all morning. In the afternoon, the kids can work. One of the saddest things for us to see was kids literally go from joyously kicking a soccer ball around at recess and studying long division to digging through trash literally an hour later. Below are three photos. In the back row of the classroom, there is a boy who you then see walking to the dump and finally standing on top of a trash heap sorting through it with other kids who had just been in school.







Pastor Jeony also has a goals to get all of the adults out by 2017 by establishing a recycling and trash processing plant which will employ the people and give them a safe working environment and regular income.

Jeony told the group from his experience what these people don't need or want is pity. They want compassion. And what an illustration this was for us. Anybody would feel pity and sadness for the people who spend day after day trying to turn someone else's trash into their treasure - their income, their sustenance - particularly for the children. But who would be willing to show compassion? Because that requires sacrifice, understanding and getting to know them, living around them, sharing their burdens, being a part of the dirt and stench, not ever fearing that by shaking their hand or hugging them, you will get sick or dirty. It is 100% selfless. In short, compassion involves BEING with them them and SHARING with them through their sufferings and desolation.

Jeony is an illustration of how pity is an EMOTION, but compassion is an ACTION in response to emotion. Pity comes easily, compassion doesn't. Pity requires having a heart to feel. Compassion involves feeling the hearts of others and sharing in their struggles. Jeony is a model of compassion for the people who live and work at the dump. He listens to them. He eats with them, sharing their food findings that they so generously offer him... even when it is chicken intestines (and what´s inside) from the poultry plant. He takes them to the hospital when they are sick. He arranges to get them vaccinations against Tetanus and Hepatitis. He is deeply concerned about the kids getting educated and the adults getting to a better place in life. He is a servant and expects nothing in return. He is Jesus to the people of the dump.

In just a few minutes, Jeony taught us so much about life, human need, and service. We left the dump feeling saddened and shocked by how these people live. We wonder why we have been born with so much, yet these people have been born into so little. There is something so deeply wrong about what we saw... we wished we could just snap our fingers and fix everything that is wrong about that desolate place. And yet, God has placed saints like Jeony to truly live incarnationally amongst them, not to snap his fingers and to fix things, but to be with them as they work through the day to day challenges and to have a vision for their future. He is willing to do the hard work and stick with them for the long haul. What an incredible inspiration and challenge to us. And what a life-changing experience.

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A few more photos we wanted to share...

Not everyone sleeps in the dump. Some are privileged enough to have houses like these built on the way up to the dump, a short walk away. And close enough to smell it.


As we got into our car, this 18 year old asked Lisa if we could take him to the U.S.


These boys fish through their trash bags to show off what they have found.


Two other young faces of the dump...