Smokey Mountain
Our day started at 6am, but I’d been up since five tossing and turning and sweating in my bunk. The room where 23 girls on my squad, including myself, had been staying for the past week was like a giant oven; the fans dispersed throughout the room only pushed around the hot air. I gave up trying to fall back asleep and instead stared, or glared rather, at the ceiling until others started waking up about an hour later. Not wanting anyone to talk to me, or for that matter look at me, I retreated to the kitchen downstairs where the hardworking staff had laid out a breakfast of hardboiled eggs, banana bread muffins, and apples for us. I grabbed a muffin, forgoing a plate or even a napkin, and sat in a chair positioned so that it faced the wall.
At 6:30, eighteen of us, and an Australian family that had also been staying at the Kids International Ministries Manila compound, squeezed into two vans headed for the train station. I put my headphones in and stared out the window, I don’t know if it was the heat, the homesickness, or the head cold I had been fighting, but I was just not in the mood. The train ride was about a thirty-minute excursion that took us to Recto where a young man named Genesis was scheduled to meet us. In true Filipino fashion, Genesis was about 20 minutes late which also meant that for 20 minutes we stood sweating in the early morning sun outside the station and as the day grew longer my temper grew shorter. When he arrived we drove another 20 minutes to a small church where his dad was the pastor. As we winded through the streets of Recto the smell of rotting garbage grew stronger and more unpleasant.
Shuffling into the small church, we squeezed into tiny desks, Genesis explained that we would hike up a landfill known as Smokey Mountain with water, rice, and sausages to feed the children and families of the small village at the top. Smokey Mountain was named that when, for 50 years, it was a trash dump continually being set on fire. Now covered by a blanket of grass, people have made their homes up there, the kings and queens of landfill hill. I grabbed a large jug of water and followed behind Genesis as we hiked up the surprisingly steep slopes of the old landfill. As I climbed, my mood began to change. I focused on the top of the hill and the closer I got the more I realized that today would be one I would remember for a long time.
Since being in the Philippines, I’ve experience poverty more than I ever had in the States. It is not uncommon to see entire neighborhoods made out of coconut wood, scrap metal, and cinder blocks. In fact, I’m almost more surprised when we drive past neighborhoods with real houses. But nothing that I had experienced thus far could have prepared me for what waited on top of Smokey Mountain. As soon as we set the jugs of water down at the small preschool that was really just a concrete slab with a roof, kids immediately started appearing from the two paths that converged at the school. They were all dirty, with streaks of black smeared across the faces, arms, and legs and some of them were wearing only underwear or even no clothes at all. As I sat on a small, blue table, catching my breath after the climb, a little girl in a blue dress came running out from behind the trees. We didn’t exchange names, just smiles, but she climbed into my lap as if she’d known me for years. Like we were sisters, and that’s what she called me, “Ate” (sister).
As she played with the camera in my lap, other children lined up outside of the preschool to have their hands washed by my team mates, knowing they couldn’t enter to receive a lunch of white rice with a hot dog and ketchup unless they first let us scrub their hands with soap and water. Older children carried younger siblings as Jeff, one of the volunteers with Genesis’ church, explained to me that as the mountain heats up during the day, toxic gases accumulate and are released at night. The families living on the mountain breathe them in unaware that it’s slowly killing them, that’s why you see a lot of kids taking care of kids, the life expectancy is only 45 years old up here. He also told me that five years ago, when they first started doing these feedings, that about half the children would die before they turned five due to health problems that could have been prevented. It’s gotten better since then, but they still lose a lot of children to preventable diseases.
My focus shifted to a young mom, not much older than me, standing just outside the doorway with a baby perched on her hip. The child looked around with glazed eyes, she didn’t seem alert like most babies. Then I realized that half of her skull was covered by a very large, very open wound, even from a distance away, I could see flies swarming and landing on it. Dogs had also started to gather around the shack, they were all hairless or starting to look that way and I could count the ribs and vertebrae on each one. They followed the children who had already received their food hoping to score a few grains of rice, but the children were careful not to waste any. I watched as they carefully shoveled handfuls of rice into their mouth, though they’d washed their hands not minutes before, the black under their fingernails suggested that it wasn’t just rice they were ingesting.
A woman named Agnes who, against all odds looked much older than 45, offered to take us on a tour of Smokey Mountain. I followed her with a child gripping each of my hands down a path that winded past houses made of wood and tarps. She pointed out her own home, which seemed a little more established than the rest as it leaned on a tree for support. We walked through the vegetables that the community had planted and I thought about the fact that the plants were taking root in 50 years worth of garbage. As we returned to the preschool she looked down at her pink T-shirt complaining that it was dirty and old, but also stating that it was the only one she had. We got back just as Genesis was scraping the last of the rice out onto a plate, the rest of my team mates were swinging kids around and singing songs with them. An older girl approached me and twirled a chunk of my hair in between her fingers and told me she thought I was very pretty. I told her the same back and she smiled and shook her head, “No,” she said, “but you are white and pretty.”
We climbed back down, waving goodbye to the children and arrived back at the church to a lunch of chicken and noodles with ice-cold sodas. We sat talking to Genesis and his family for about another hour before it came time to leave. As we climbed into the cars that would take us back to the train station I looked over my shoulder at Smokey Mountain and thought about what the girl had said to me. I thought about the color of my skin and where I was born and for the first time I asked why. I’d woken up angry that day because I was uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with the heat, with the cold I had been battling, and with the fact that there were 23 of us sharing two bathrooms, but when I laid my head on the pillow that night my perspective shifted in a big way. I thanked God for the opportunity He had given me to travel and serve others, for good health, running water, and fans that push around hot air. Also the chance that He had given me to experience the things I had today, for opening my eyes to true poverty, but also to children who still find it in themselves to love despite their living situation. I will never forget the day I spent on Smokey Mountain, in the short time I was up there I experienced a whirlwind of emotions, but one overwhelmed the rest, graditude.
