This is a post written by one of the summer interns, Michael Di Giacoma. It gives great insight into the differences in dumps in the US and the dump in Guatemala City.
I went with my dad to the dump today.
Now many people would say that going to the dump is not on the list of exciting places to go, in fact they might look at you funny.
At first I thought it was just an ordinary delivery of garbage to a common dumping area. The smell had started to pierce my nostrils the instant we got out to unload. We finished unloading the trash and drove to the scale to be weighed. The bill: $30.89 for 989 lbs of junk lumber. Just under half a ton. Which for Delaware is 1 ton of trash is $80. We left and it was finished.
I give this context for the following. I went into a different dump today. Completely different from the one I was in over four weeks ago. In Guatemala City its called the "Dump", in Uganda they call it the "Dustbin" and in the US we call it the "Landfill". Sure there was trash and garbage trucks and people working and it stinks. But as a I am breathing in the filth of my home county, the one thing I notice is that this is not a place in which people live; where children work alongside adults; where people horde their earthly belongings.
This is the trash dump and here is where you get fined for stealing trash. Where you spend $80 for removal of the unwanted.
What I believe I am trying to say is that I am very blessed to have been born in the United States not in the sewage of the city dump. Not to live close quarters with my neighbors, not to work along side my parents as they earned $2 for the day. God as a human being I cannot comprehend what it would be like to be those people in the dump. You have a plan though. You are in control. When the rain comes and washes away a family's home or the family itself you have a plan. You have a purpose. I trust in you and when I become annoyed with life in this bountiful country and I begin to complain about the minuscule problems I have, let the stench of trash reach my nose and remind me that there are those who have it harder than me.
It is the dump that I have heard some of the most interesting stories. Women who have lost husbands to land slides and children who have lost parents to drugs and fathers abusing their own daughters and water trucks and many other stories, but the one that has come from a few different people is that of women who have nothing but trash proclaim Jesus as Lord and trust Him to provide for their every need. I can't tell them to sacrifice for the Lord, I can't speak anything into their lives but I can pray for them. God help your church to reach out to the hurting universal church, help me to reach out to the hurting church.
