My body is tired, but you don’t need to know this. What does it matter about my body. Hers is tired too. This girl in the dump standing by vultures picking through the rot of human trash. Some think she is trash too living in this place as she does, house of sticks and plastic propped up by smoke and wind. Tired. She doesn’t act tired. She plods through rubbish with her girlfriend giggling at our questions. The vultures swarm and as natural and ordinary as her smile is the vultures still swarm and i cannot think of her life as ordinary. Benny says she chooses this vocation, or her family does, so there is no excuse for it and therefor there should be no pity. What I can’t get out of my mind is that this is even a choice her family can make, to live in a garbage city on a cliff and have as your vocation garbage pickers. How does this girl introduce herself, me llamo so and so and I live in the dump on the top of the hill. All the boys would laugh and make fun of her dirty pants and filthy shirt. We drive now from the mountain again to plates of hot food and clean beds.
Uploaded by: flip holsinger on 12th March, 2010.
I’m in Honduras on Spring Break campaigns with Harding. Interesting that you write about trash, someone went through our trash last night ripping it apart to find something, anything, maybe a piece of food or a can to sell. We were all asleep in our slatted bunk beds, with fans blowing on us to keep us comfortable. We awoke to eat our cereal, then to load in our trucks to be transported to our worksites. We know when and where our meals will be, how we will get from one place to another in relative ease, and when and where we’ll place our heads tonight. Something is not right with all of this.
It is hard to understand…but, maybe that is not our job…maybe we are called to love undeterred by the choice her family has made…maybe the Love will be the changing catalyst someday. I know that you do this already! Amazing picture.