A night with garbage miners in northern Peru
August 23, 2011
By Christopher Huber
Sammamish resident’s journey exposes hardships, hopes of poor in Peru
Just minutes after I lay down on the sheet-covered queen-size mattress with a thick woolen blanket rolled up for a pillow, I cinched the bottom of my jacket, hoping it would keep the spiders out.
It was 9 p.m., Aug. 9. I tried to sleep. I only had until midnight, when we would head to the landfill to start working. As I dozed off, I thought I felt slight biting sensations marching around my waist and ankles. I figured it was all in my head — I was exhausted from working construction and speaking Spanish all day. And I was way out of my comfort zone, sleeping in a small, adobe brick room on the outskirts of Trujillo, Peru, the country’s third largest city. Somewhat paranoid, I itched then squished the spot each time I felt it, just in case it really was a bug.
Outside, the ducks chattered as they huddled in darkness below, a donkey’s bray joined the chorus of a cool night, and my nostrils filled with the pungent scent of gritty earth, decaying animal carcasses and burning garbage.
With the garbage miners
I had come to Trujillo on a mission trip with Inca Link International, an organization which partners with churches and youth groups to serve the youth of Latin America. We spent eight days constructing foundations for an orphanage and trade school in the rougher part of town. We also spent time with attention-starved children in a daycare and had visited the landfill to shake hands with the workers and offer fresh fruit for lunch.
I was with a group from Canada and California that stayed at Helping Hands, a Trujillo hostel established by missionaries from the Seattle area.
But this night I was sleeping at the “corral,” an outpost of sorts that Luis “Chichi” Chihuaman Valdiviezo and his family use for sorting trash, raising livestock and gathering with groups from Inca Link. Chichi, his brother, Jose Chihuaman Valdiviezo, and their mother sleep in this little room or in another loft before heading out each night to mine trash in the city dump.
I spent the night in that dump, following Jose and his fellow trash miners as they worked through the wee hours of the morning and into the day. I didn’t just get used to walking through slimy trash and watching out for sharp objects and scavenging dogs. I also caught a glimpse of how difficult life can be for people who don’t have other options.
I wasn’t trying to prove anything. In fact, when the director of Inca Link International, Lisa Merritt, asked me, days before, if I had made up my mind about doing it, I stuttered and tried to think up some excuse to not go through with it. It would have been perfectly reasonable to want to return to the relative comfort of the hostel with the rest of the group after a day of hard construction work at the orphanage site.
We had just spent an hour or so playing soccer and other games with children and their parents in the middle of a barren plot of land at the corral on the other side of the fence from the landfill. And as I fumbled with my words for a decent excuse, I looked over at Chichi, the plateau of trash behind him in the distance, and said to Lisa something like, “yeah, I think I should do it.” My mind was defeated by an overriding sense of the need to understand and to be humbled.
Ultimately, I wanted a glimpse of the brothers’ daily lives. I wanted to have a specific, jolting experience that might help me give a voice to the voiceless. I wanted to see if life in such a forgotten, invisible place like a garbage dump — you drive right past the prison to get to the landfill — was as dire or desperate as we North Americans might think it is. It is. And it isn’t.
All they know
At midnight, Jose woke me up — I was still oblivious to the collection of bites covering my body — and we drove to the landfill in his two-seat, motorcycle-powered moto-taxi. About 50 people were already working when we arrived. Even at night, the scene is overwhelming. Following suggestions, I wore a cloth over my mouth and nose so I wouldn’t breathe in the toxic smoke or juicy stench of the trash. Donkeys pull wooden carts up the hill to the dump site, as workers nap in front of garbage bonfires. The carts or moto-taxis park in a line about 100 feet from the newest trash piles. It’s sour, stale, and choking. I don’t want to know what I just stepped on.
Chichi and Jose Chihuaman Valdiviezo pose for a photo near the Trujillo, Peru municipal landfill.
About every half-hour another truck came. Jose waited for the newer, white trucks, because they brought more trash. The workers — at night all you see is the glow of their headlamps and trash heaps at their feet — bunch around the back of the truck. And as it pushes the waste out, the workers jab and rake the trash out with 8-foot poles that have two-pronged metal hooks attached to the end. The truck pulls away, they make a pile or two and each taps an area to mark his or her own spot.
Chichi, 31, and Jose, 28, have mined trash since they were both children. They were forced to find a source of income to support their mother and siblings when their father’s employer would not pay him or was late providing paychecks for work done far from the city. Jose only finished school through the fifth grade. Chichi didn’t pass his college-entrance exam, so he hit a dead end. For more than 20 years, they have spent 12-16 hours per day sorting through Trujillo’s garbage.
The brothers have a side business raising pigs for income, so they look for food scraps to use for feed. They also sort out recyclable materials to sell for a few cents per kilo. Plastic and paper fetch the best rate, but copper from electronics, cables, wires, and even auto parts, is also worth collecting.
By 8 a.m., Jose had collected enough material to deliver large sacks of food scraps and bundles of recyclables to the corral area, where his sister, Erika, and Chichi’s wife, Lorena, spent much of the day sorting it. Each day, someone picks up the materials, sells them and returns to the family with payment, Lorena said.
Contradictions
It is dire, in the sense that the brothers and a couple hundred others spend their days picking through nasty garbage, most without gloves or air filter masks and worry about stepping on needles or getting sick.
But for Chichi and Jose, it’s all a quest to feed their families and make a way for themselves in a country where the rich are getting richer off abundant natural resources and the poor are getting poorer. Development in cities like Lima is thriving. Tourism booms in Cuzco and at Machu Picchu. But the education system is weak and many survive on less than $10 a day. The fact the brothers have a concrete-walled home says they earn more than some people, but the floors are bare dirt.
Mining trash is all they know. Chichi started working in the dump when he was 8. It is what their young children know, too, although they don’t actually work in the dump. The brothers live with their families about two miles from the landfill. But they spend most of their time, it seems, at the corral. It’s not uncommon to see any one of them take a swig of the soda from a bottle they found in the landfill the previous night.
In a sense, though, it is not quite as dire or hopeless as well-off Americans might think. For Chichi and Jose, it’s a brotherhood, a community, a family. Sure they’re dirty and their clothes smell like garbage. But they still goof around and find joy in the little things, like a shared meal or a game of soccer. And at least when a wealthy Peruvian throws out their food scraps, someone else — or their pigs — will eat a little better that day.
Some said working in the dump is better than roaming the streets, scavenging for food in family trash cans out of desperation. The trash miners aren’t entirely desperate; they’re just doing what they can to get along in life.
In the end, the toughest part for this gringo with a stable income, clean clothes and plenty of food on the dinner table back home was actually the moment that I got to press the “escape” button. I had spent a day and night with a tight-knit family earning a living on the edge of poverty by literally harvesting garbage. I ate with them, shook their hands, kissed their cheeks, played with their children, talked about life with them and walked through trash with them.
I got to have a taxi pick me up and take me back to the hostel, where I took a hot shower and a long nap. Chichi and Jose went back to the trash heaps and Lorena waited to collect the couple of dollars they’d get for the sacks of paper and plastic bottles.
Losing a few hours’ sleep and not worrying about a couple hundred bed bug bites was the least I could do.
HELP THE CAUSE: Learn more or donate to Inca Link International at www.incalink.net. Contact Christopher Huber for information about the next service trip.
Reporter Christopher Huber can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 242, or chuber@isspress.com. Comment on this story at www.SammamishReview.com.
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Very interesting. I’m not sure I could do what Chris did – but Jesus would!
Great write up! I’ve seen a lot of this world and through it all, I really believe that everyone should have experiences like you’ve had. Most of the population of the world lives in poverty, seeing it up close & personal gives us an opportunity to grow as people, develop compassion and changes the way we look at the world around us.
In reading this article, you will discover Chris’ gift for painting pictures with words proving the excellent journalist that he is. But for me personally, I had the privilege of working alongside of Chris as the leader of the Canadian Mission Peru Team. He very much is a man who wants to help as he continues to pursue deeper meaning in life for himself, his family, and those around him. I can vouch that the man behind this writing makes this article even more inspiring. It was a pleasure serving with you Chris.