The Dump

Yesterday afternoon we had the awesome experience of going with our landlord to feed lunch to the people at the dump.  These people spend their days at the dump waiting for garbage trucks to come so that they can sift through all the stuff and collect plastic and glass bottles, and aluminum cans.  Our landlord, Jerry, and his wife, Deborah, met a lady and her daughter who spent their days doing this, so they drove out to see it a few years ago and ever since then they bring these people lunch every few months.

I went in the morning to help Jerry and Deborah make the sandwiches.  He said that they used to feed the people rice and beans, but that required bringing bowls and utensils, so now they make sandwiches instead - it's easier.  They put pureed beans on wheat bread, stuck some cheese and lettuce and salt on it, wrapped it up with a napkin, and stuck it in a baggie.  We made 90 sandwiches.

That afternoon we went with Jerry to the dump.  Our first time in a car in a month!

As soon as they saw his jeep they came running from the dump pile and lined up to get their lunch.

Joe handed out the drink - chicha.  Nicaraguans drink this stuff like water.  They are often carrying around a little baggie of this drink with a straw sticking out of it.

Nicaraguan "chicha de maiz" is made by soaking the corn in water over night. On the following day it is ground and placed in water, red food colouring is added, and the whole mixture is cooked. Once cooled, sugar and more water is added. On the following day one adds further water, sugar and flavoring. Although fermented chicha is available, the unfermented type is the most common. - Wikipedia

I took a panoramic video of the place while Jerry and Joe handed out the food.

Vultures were everywhere and it stunk pretty bad.  Jerry said it was nice that it had rained the night before because usually when they come to bring lunch it's incredibly dusty and they have to wear scarves over their mouths and noses.

After everyone at the dump had gotten a sandwich, we had just enough left for the people who were going to be on the back of the city dump truck when it arrived.

These are the goods.  Everyone had their own basket or bag for the stuff that they collected.  When a garbage truck came and they collected more bottles, they would come dump them here in their stash.

And the people congregated up under the tree to pass the time talking until the next dump truck came.

A few other trucks came and went while we were waiting for the big city truck.  When they pulled in some people would run out to start going through the bags that were dumped.

And then carry their findings back to add to their piles.

A truck brought more diesel for the bulldozer in a big canister and they dumped it by the bucket full.  Maybe that's normal, but I've never seen anything but a pump before.  Kind of cool.  Jerry said that this was the first time that he's seen a tractor at the dump at all.  So apparently the city is really trying to improve things here.



After waiting for about 30 minutes, the big city garbage truck came.  The guys sitting in the back are the garbage men who pick up the garbage bags along the road and toss them in.  They go through the garbage as they collect it to get out all of the recyclable things, so when the people at the dump get to it, it's already been gone through once.

We gave the guys on the truck a sandwich and a drink before they pulled in to dump their garbage.

You can't see it in the picture, but everyone had long poles with hooks that they were using to pull the bags down off the truck.  The ones who couldn't reach the top were using the hooks to rip open bags that were farther down on the truck. Craziness. I wanted to get up closer to get a better picture, but I obviously didn't want it enough to walk through that stuff!

Jerry said that the lady and daughter that they knew that used to hunt in the trash for bottles all day earned about $8 a week.  Hmmm....maybe Joe's job isn't so bad after all :)