Hell on Earth: Life in a Cambodian dump

A young girl cries out in pain after receiving a minor injury to her right hand at The Stung Meanchey Landfill in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Over 700 tons of garbage is sifted through by roughly 2000 workers, including 600 children, who work there each day.
(Photo: John Brown at http://www.lightstalkers.org/john_brown)

Dec. 10, 2007
Sherrie Buzby
The Arizona Republic (USA)

CAMBODIA STILL LIVES in the shadow of the 1970s genocide, where up to 2 million people were brutally murdered by the Khmer Rouge and their leader, Pol Pot.

For a month last summer, more than 800 volunteers - including six Arizona members on the medical teams - partnered with 15 churches and ministries from around the world to bring hope to a country still struggling to recover. I participated in a project called Hope Cambodia through Hand of Hope, the World Missions division of Joyce Meyer Ministries, based in St. Louis, Mo.

Fifteen Hope Centers, nine of which also house orphanages, were built to offer feeding programs and educational opportunities for hundreds of needy children. Medical and dental clinics treated more than 9,000 patients.

My responsibility was to photograph some of these events and capture the local culture.

As someone who had been looking at photos of poverty and sickness for more than 20 years as a news photographer, I thought that nothing could really shake me.

But then we arrived at the Stung Meanchey municipal waste dump in Phnom Penh.

As the smoke from trash fires rose in the air, I felt like I was in a scene from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. The smell at the dump was unbearable. It resembled a combination of vomit, feces and smoke. One of the veteran videographers told me to put lip balm under my nose to help with the odor.

When we saw the first child in the dump, I expected to be excited to get the shot, working the right angle and looking for a good composition. As the reality of what was right in front of me set in, however, my eyes welled with tears. I had to put the camera down.

How in the year 2007 could any human being have to live like this? And not only one human being; the entire dump was covered with people of all ages, picking through the most unimaginable slime to find anything of the slightest value.

I put the camera back up to my eyes, shielded once again from the reality of children as young as 5 picking through maggots and fresh loads of garbage dropped by huge trucks.

This garbage is their home. Roughly 2,000 people, about 600 of whom are children, live and work at the 100-acre landfill. The shelters where they live are made from any scrap material they can bind together for cover: old burlap bags, torn then sewn together to make a wall, and tin siding held together by twine.

I saw entire families sifting through the trash they lived in. Dogs limped through the trash as a goat walked by.

The people sifted through the trash to find anything for resale: plastic bags, plastic bottles, glass or cans. The children (orphans or those sent to help their families) work for as little as 50 cents per day. A van looked like it had an entire family living in it.

Our interpreter, a young man named Sim Samnang, told us that the scavengers also look for anything edible and sometimes eat partly rotten food. Samnang said they cannot wash their clothes because there is no clean water. Mosquitoes swarm them as they sleep at night.

A young man came up to meet us, his feet and calves caked with the gross, murky, muddy water. Still, he was smiling and friendly. Dragonflies, a symbol of prosperity to Asian people, floated in irony all around us.

Samnang said many younger kids are killed by the trash trucks, which run day and night. The children fall beneath the wheels as they try to jump onto the lumbering trucks.

I spotted a young girl about 12. Samnang said such girls are the most exploitable for the sex trade.

We walked by a recycling-center building where young children were moving incredibly large bales of cardboard. A skinny chicken walked by, most of its feathers torn off. Samnang spoke with one boy who told us he was 15. He lived and worked at this shop, making $30 per month, sleeping on top of the cardboard bales. He quit school in the fifth grade so he could work.

At the back entrance, we found two girls working in the dump. One was 14, the other 10. They had worked there for six years. Their parents lived in another province, instructing them to send home money. A little boy picked grass from a green clump that was growing in the rubbish. I saw something that resembled a cucumber vine blooming among the garbage. A woman in her late 60s or early 70s walked out into the smelly, fetid water that surrounded the trash. She pushed a basket down into the water and pulled out gross plastic bags she had just collected from the dump. She was washing them. She put them into the basket and walked on them like you would stomp grapes.

Nearby, two young girls hovered over a 3-inch strand of a broken necklace they had found, thrilled with their prize. A woman walked up to us carrying her daughter. The girl couldn't walk because her feet were oozing with sores and disease.

That night, as I snuggled into my comfortable bed with clean white sheets, my mind was haunted by the images of the day. I mulled over all the "whys" in my mind. Why was there suffering like this? Why them and not me?

I had only a brief time at the dump, so my photos barely scratched the surface of their existence. I wondered what it was like for them at night, pillaging fresh trash piles, wearing headlights to spot any scrap to sell or eat. I tried to imagine how they felt in the darkness with the rain falling and rats running under their feet.

I flashed back to an image of a scavenger cleaning his hands with ground coconut because there was no fresh water anywhere in sight. I wondered when the men came like vultures, hunting for children to steal for the sex trade. I lay there silently, trying to let the sights, sounds, smells and emotion soak deeply into my spirit so I wouldn't forget. The seemingly important pending issues of my life suddenly seemed foolish. I didn't sleep well.

Months have now passed since photographing Hope Cambodia. As much as I've tried to keep those memories fresh, "normal" life has crept in again. I worry about reseeding the winter grass and where I can find the best roast for a holiday dinner.

Then a few days ago, I had to retrieve an old receipt from the trash for a return. I was totally repulsed by the idea, even though I knew the worst thing I would encounter would be spoiled lettuce and broken eggshells.

Suddenly, I found myself back at that dump, trying to understand how it would feel to have no other option than to rummage through garbage 10 hours a day for survival.

I was embarrassed.

It made me want to do something to make a difference like I saw others making in the Hope Cambodia project.

The enormous amount of need in the world can feel overwhelming, but I've seen how just a few volunteers can bring hope to a people who had given up on anything more than mere survival. There is comfort in what one can do.

Sherrie Buzby has been a photographer with The Arizona Republic since 1998.