Life on Trash Mountain

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/

via CAAI

Meg Mason
From: Sunday Magazine

December 19, 2010

Chek Toy, a 12-year-old Cambodian girl, scavenges to collect recyclable goods at a sprawling, 100-acre garbage dump in Phnom Penh on February 5, 2008. Source: Supplied

THE HUMBLE gumboot is saving the lives of children living on Cambodia's rubbish heaps.

For those if us who rarely leave home without antibacterial handwash, the scenes Amy Hanson describes are almost inconceivable.

Children as young as two, naked and barefoot, living alone or in gangs on a steaming trash mountain a few kilometres outside Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. It sounds like a bad dream, but it's life for about 600 children who call this municipal dump, dubbed 'Smokey Mountain' by locals, their home.

Some were born there and deserted by their parents, others found their way from the streets, but all spend the day combing through rubbish to find edible waste or things to sell. At night, they dig caves in the knolls to sleep in, away from the rats. The youngest have no concept of a world beyond the dump, which stretches, hill after hill, as far as they can see.

On top of being filthy and dangerous, Smokey Mountain hits temperatures above 30 degrees for much of the year. Then there's the smell. "When the driver took me there, he pulled over to retch," says Hanson. "I didn't throw up, amazingly. You do eventually get used to it, but I'll never get used to the heat or the flies."

So what took Hanson, a 31-year-old former celebrity and lifestyle journalist, to this hell on earth? What compelled a bright, single woman to quit a job that involved swilling free bubbly and hoarding luxury freebies, so she could work, full-time unpaid, for these forgotten children?

"I took time off work to go backpacking around Asia but, after a while, I was like, 'Right, my tan's good now, what shall I do next?'" she says, describing what led her to wander into a Phnom Penh orphanage. "It wasn't planned, but I wanted to do something useful, so I said, 'I'm here, what can I do?'" It surprised Hanson that, in a country devastated by genocide and HIV, and where nearly 40 per cent of the population is under 15, there were only 30 children in the orphanage.

"I said to staff, 'Where are all the others?'" she says. "They replied, 'The dump.'" Hanson threw on gumboots, packed a surgical mask and had a driver take her there.

"I'd seen poverty before, but nothing like this," she says. "I kept thinking, why isn't this on the news? Why don't we know about this?" > Perhaps we're so used to hearing about the less fortunate, it's become a bit of a blur. According to Unicef, of the 2.2 billion children in the world, one billion live in poverty and 24,000 die every day.

Through contacts at a local Pour Sourire d'Enfant ('For the Smile of a Child') office, Hanson teamed up with Mey, a girl who'd grown up on the dumps but was now working as a nanny. Mey returned to the dumps to help her make a plan. Children clustered around Hanson, pointing at her feet. "Mey told me they wanted my shoes. And I asked her, 'If you could have been given one thing when you lived on the dumps, what would it have been?' She said, 'Shoes.'" Mey's own feet are heavily scarred, thanks to cuts and burns from fossicking in rubbish. Left untreated as they are, the children's injuries tend to become infected, rendering them unable to walk or work. "They're emotionally and physically trapped in this dump," says Hanson. "The savvier kids get out and find help, but the most vulnerable can't.."

The idea of providing shoes resonated with Hanson, but at first she didn't know if that was enough. "I thought, why can't we get these kids off the trash?" The answer: bureaucracy. Children have to live on the dumps for at least six months before charities are allowed to rehouse them, to discourage parents dumping more offspring.

"It was too big a job," says Hanson. "So I decided to do what I could." She flew back to London, planning to raise pound sterling 500 to buy 300 pairs of gumboots - one for every child living on the dump, according to Mey's estimate. Hanson posted a message on Facebook: "Feel the love, send me a fiver." She ended up raising pound sterling 1500. Which was lucky; when she returned to the dump, 600 children came forward to claim a new pair boots. Cars can't access Smokey Mountain, so Hanson, Mey and helpers from the village carted them in on tuk tuks.

"It was total chaos," she says. "The kids were amazing, but there were adults, too, who'd been living on the dump for 20 years, and they were aggressive, demanding to go first.

It was frightening - no matter how many times I told them there was enough to go around, they still shoved and screamed."

After five hours in searing heat, the adults had been served and Hanson could finally focus on the children. "They were so patient," she says. "These kids had never been to school, but they all waited their turn, happy to help the younger ones. They were so pleased with their boots, jumping around in them and smiling. I was emotionally overwhelmed."

When Hanson ran out of sizes, she called a vendor in town, who ferried more out by scooter. By the end of the day, 900 pairs had been distributed. "That moment, when they first put their boots on, still makes me cry," she recalls.

Back in London, Hanson is now raising money for her next trip, to a dump in Nicaragua, and has registered as a charity, Small Steps. Her friends serve as trustees, fundraisers and legal aids - whatever they're good at, and all pro bono. "My friends have been amazing, they all really support me."

But unsurprisingly, the experience has changed Hanson's outlook on how the same friends spend their money. "It makes me sick when they fork out pound sterling 500 for a pair of Jimmy Choos," she says. "I try to discourage them; that money could buy 250 pairs of gumboots.

I used to be into the same things - champagne and lovely shoes - and I know they're entitled to it, but I don't think you can enjoy all that stuff when you know what else is going on."

Which is why Hanson is planning to take her message to her old stomping ground - the celebrity circuit. "I'll contact every star I've interviewed and ask them to give me a pair of shoes, which I'll auction," she says. "The more I raise, the more I can do. I'm totally not-for-profit. Whatever people give me, I use to buy stuff that I hand straight to the kids."

After Hanson returned home the first time, a film company picked up her story and sent her back to Cambodia with cameras. The documentary Around the World in 80 Dumps chronicles her efforts so far and her goal to visit as many inhabited dumps she can find. The task is monumental.

"It's not like there's a list of inhabited dumps on Google," Hanson says. "You have to go to the countries and ask around, but I know there are three in Cambodia, one in Thailand, Nicaragua, Gaza, and lots in South America. I won't just do boots; I'll find out what they need and buy it.

"It's a small thing, that's why I called it Small Steps. I don't want people to think they can't help. The tiniest thing - a pair of boots - can take a kid one step further from poverty."