Not my usual fluff and fold (mature audiences only)

Today I heard a woman yelling for her life. She was drowning in a pile of trash at the Zona 3 Guatemala City dump. I was walking along the embankment, some precarious twists and turns, steep gravelly inclines, and death defying drops to the dump, which lies in the ravine of an old river. We were walking within the small shantytown of impermanent shelters made of corrugated metal and cardboard boxes where families live, eat, sleep, laugh and make love (or sometimes just have sex, or sometimes just suffer sexual abuse and molestation). These people live in extreme poverty. The way they make money is by picking, sorting, and salvaging pieces of junk within mountains of trash at the dump. Some people call them recyclers, a more dignified way to name their toil. But the truth is picking through the small pieces of salvaged metal sold for pennies hardly seems like dignity.

As we walked, we heard shouts for help. "Que paso?" we yelled down into the ravine. And as she shouted her predicament, her voice trembling with fear, we called for help. Some piles of trash float on top of water, and it is hard to distinguish between the trash piles on sold ground, and the floating ones that act more like quicksand, pulling one under the filth. She had begun to be pulled under, in imminent danger of drowning and being buried alive by trash. It makes me shudder.

Our colleagues ushered us out of the way, while some young men half-ran, half bounded down the steep hillside to go and save her. She was pulled to safety by several of these men and a rope. A few minutes later the bomberos that had been called were running down the hillside to help, and check her for injuries. I later learned that this woman, was a member of the Health and Safety Committee of these informally organized collective of wastepickers. She goes house to house, talking about the dangers of the dump, and practices for better safety - like working in groups of 2 or 3 in case of mishaps. But her husband had recently died; she had six kids. She was desperate. Extreme poverty drives one to desperation for survival which leads to horrific unimaginable choices. 

This story is no exaggeration In this very same dump in 2008, a trash avalanche buried 40 wastepickers. Their bodies were not recovered, many of their names were not documented. This disaster orphaned several many children, including a family of six siblings living in a shack adjacent the dump, who lost both their parents in the trash avalanche.

Certainly, witnessing such a thing can put life and our problems into perspective. Is it a luxury problem we’re dealing with? Or is the problem on the order the magnitude of a pesky mosquito? Are we truly desperate? Or merely dramatic?

Along the way, an older women from the community association held my hand on the steep inclines, as I struggled with my unsure footing and irrational (now seeming all the more rational) fears of the steep paths. After the event, as we called the police, and then were ushered away from the scene, I did not see her again. She was an angel to me today, and I send her my gratitude out here in cyberspace.