Project Cement Floor

Last Sunday, I spent about 6 hours with a group of 12 volunteers mixing cement and pouring a floor for a very poor family that lives near the Guatemala dump, the largest dump in Central America.

Many people in the neighborhood work at the trash dump sifting through the garbage to find things to recycle and selling it to the buyers that show up everyday. They make about $6/day doing this and the conditions are unimaginable.

We made about six batches of a mix containing three wheel barrels full of rock, two wheel barrels of sand and a bag of cement. You add water and mix over and over and over again and you have lumpy cement that is smoothed out once it's layed on the ground.

Here's a You Tube video that I found for my parents to give them an idea of the living conditions of people near the dump. It's difficult to explain, but the video will give you a visual - it's also an inspirational story about a former Reuters photographer who is helping out the children of the dump through education.

I talked to a woman from the Young Life group who helped organize Sunday's floor building project and she said they really need kids' clothes. I told her I'd be donating all of Sienna's clothes when she's done with them and also told her that I've had a ton of generous friends and family who have bought her things, so we'll have plenty to donate! My friend Mindy mailed a giant box of clothes that her daughter had barely used to my parent's house in Minnesota twice and I'll be donating all of those, as well. She was thrilled!

The conditions these folks live in was unreal. We worked on two houses - both of them were as small as a regular bedroom at home (about 10 ft x 10 ft), but inside was a kitchen (wood burning stove that spewed smoke into the house that would make your eyes water) and enough room to sleep basically five adults (our house included a mom, dad, 25 year old, 18 year old and a 15 year old).

The floor was made of dirt and rocks before we poured the concrete floor they now have. Thinking of Sienna growing up in that environment extremely sad. I know that's all those folks know, but it's still sad.

On the bright side, one of the local guys who helped us out was an ex-gang member who just completed his first year of law school! I don't know where he got the money for law school, but hopefully he'll finish and help the people in his neighborhood that need it, not to mention be a role model for the other kids. It's a bit tougher here than in the States to get out of poverty, but hopefully he'll make it.

I talked to my nanny Reina when I got home about my experience and asked her what her aunt's community was like in zone 18. She said much the same as the one I worked in near the dump in zone 3. Her parents live five hours northwest of the city and have a similar style house, but it has a concrete floor, or torta (sandwich), as they call it and a bit more land around it, as they're not living in the city.

The people living near the dump are right on top of eachother and it's hard to imagine how anybody gets any sleep. I suppose you get used to the noise.

Guatemala's dump is where the majority of the trash from the city is brought. The people working there sift through it and sell the recyclables to buyers that come each day. They remove 1 million pounds of garbage a day through this recycling process.

According to the film Recycled Life, a documentary about the dump and the program Safe Passage started by Hanley Denning, a woman from Maine, the dump is close to capacity. If it closes down, it'll displace some 4,000 people that live nearby and survive off of their profits from the dump.

Although it's a dirty place, it's important for the survival of the people who work there, sifting through garbage. There is much that needs to be done in the way of safety, though. Just this past June, several people were buried alive in a trash avalanche and their remains were never found. It's not the first time this has happened. There was also a massive fire in 2005 - with all of the chemicals in the trash you can imagine how difficult it would be to put out a fire once it gets started.

After the fire, several regulations were placed on the dump. Children are no longer allowed to work there and you are only allowed in between the hours of 6 am and 6 pm with a special entrance card given to the workers, but more needs to be done.