An eyesore to those who are used to seeing asphalted roads, at least, the terrain here is of the mushy, squishy type. A crust of a curious kind that covers the unseen ground is made from layers of refuse at different stages of decomposition. All sorts of organic stuff fill the ground, from the raw to the maggoted to the egested. As to the garbage that doesn’t decompose, the place is also a grand showcase of an amazing array of synthetic items, from the ubiquitous plastic bags to polystyrene in many shapes and sizes.
The biodegradable trash emits the distinctive stench of death and dying. The non-biodegradable expels the frightening smell of kill. Plastic that has been left out in the open, under the elements, lets off a putrid sulfuric stench that comes with smoke. Some say that the killer methane must be coming from the chemical reaction between biodegradable and non-biodegradable, mixed with H20 from the rains and the CO2 that comes from somewhere. My little knowledge from high school chemistry cannot comprehend all that.
Human beings scale this place and spend hours on this mountain in the only livelihood they know how to eke out – picking trash that can be sold. Armed with long and thin metal rods that are bent on one end to make a hook, hands quickly search the area, hook items that are mostly plastic, and throw them into used rice sacks slung on emaciated backs. Like a metronome, rods held by grimy hands pierce into the refuse, expertly search and hook, and deftly shoot into the sack the coveted discards. A graphic oxymoron. Whole families can be seen plying this trade.
At the foot of this garbage mountain is a thriving colony of illegal settlers, known more colloquially as squatters. These people who have not known the more pleasant side of life, are buried under ignorance, social degradation, economic desperation, senseless infighting due to gross crab mentality, and vice. An entire family’s meal budget for the whole day may be thrown away on betting for the much publicized and legalized lotto. There is a not so half-hearted joke that poor Filipinos used to run to church to pray for hope and solution to their never-ending economic woes, but now run to the lotto betting stations for brighter hope.
Drugs proliferate the place in such ridiculous ease that one can turn on a corner, hand a ten-peso bill to one of the many people packed on every possible square foot space, and openly receive a packet of weed or a smaller sachet of what is locally known as ‘shabu.’ This drug of choice is synthetic amphetamine, regarded as poor man’s cocaine and even lower in cost than crack. It slowly fries the brain to a crisp. Peddlers are users. Users are couriers. And the whole shebang is of people drugged enough to forget that they haven’t eaten for at least two days.
On July 10, 2000, the mountain of garbage caved in on the slum colony below, killing hundreds of people and rendering some more hundreds of families homeless. That is, if makeshift contraptions made out of derelict wood, rusty galvanized iron sheet pieces, and cartons of milk assembled to stand up can be called shanties.
Days of heavy rains during one of the fiercest typhoons that ravaged the Philippines loosened the mountain of rubbish. Three days after the crash of the dumpsite, rescue teams were still pulling bloated decomposing bodies out of the heaps of garbage. Society’s debris buried under plain debris, seen over CNN.
The place has remained ugly. It is a picture postcard of squalor and pain. It is so ugly that it starts to look pretty on pictures that accompany some NGO’s country report.
Three months out of a year, every year, I live in this place on a self-funded and singular mission to do whatever I can to upgrade the literacy level of out-of-school youth who are drug dependents. Because the drug trade along the dark dingy alleys peak from 10 in the evening to 2 in the morning, I schedule my classes during those hours and call it the Midnight School. We hold it under a mango tree on the yard of a kind old lady that keeps me there, with the dim sputtering light from the lone incandescent bulb of the tiny house spilling out to provide us some form of illumination. It looks poetic to survey a sea of heads huddled over seatwork exercises.
When the police frisk these youth during the months that we don’t have school, the law enforcers find drug packets and fan knives inside pockets. During those three months, however, police are surprised to find little pocket dictionaries, ballpens, and crumpled folded makeshift notebooks instead.
I always look forward to those three months, every year.
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