Last Updated: Saturday, 12 June, 2004, 23:03 GMT 00:03 UK
Scraping a living on Peru streets
By Hannah Hennessy
BBC correspondent in Lima
Diego is 14. He is short for his age and extremely slight, but his face betrays a lost childhood.
For the past eight years, he has worked in the filthy streets of Las Lomas de Carabayllo, a shanty town in the desert on the outskirts of Lima.
He works on a rubbish truck, collecting and sorting through litter from outside houses in the district.
He earns 10 soles (just over $3) for 10 hours of work.
Diego and his four siblings all work.
They have had to since their father died, leaving their mother with five young children to clothe and feed.
"I like my job, because it's the only one I have. I need to help my family, help them buy food and things," he said, explaining that he finds his food from rummaging through the rubbish bags left by other households.
Sometimes a juice that has passed its expiry date; if he is very lucky, a yoghurt.
"The most dangerous thing is being injured by the rubbish trucks or by other vehicles," he says, ignoring the scars on his hands from sifting through rubbish that often contains metal or glass.
He hacks as he talks, his chest infected by the germs he works amongst every day.
Pressing need
The rubbish trucks that Diego works on belong to the local government.
A charity that is trying to end underage labour in Peru says the children are often hired to work on them illegally, because they are cheap.
(snip/...)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3801885.stm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Peru's rubbish-tip children
When the G8 meets tomorrow, there will be the usual talk of the plight of the developing world. But it won't mean much to the Peruvian children who scavenge a living from the country's rubbish tips. As Johann Hari discovered when he witnessed the squalor and suffering at first hand, their best hope lies elsewhere
Published: 14 July 2006
I - The Lives of the Rubbish-Children
Thirty-five miles north of Lima, Peru's dusty, lusty capital city, the rubbish of nine million people is dumped in a vast valley. I stand at its entrance watching the trucks arrive and leave, trying not to breathe in the stench of everyday household waste as it gently rots. A constant black writhe of flies covers every moist surface. Skinny dogs wander around with proprietorial confidence, snarling at fat English strangers. (OK, me.) And the children who live in these great glaciers of rubbish are silently picking through it, as they do all day, every day, searching for something to sell.
"Señor, it is not safe to enter the dump," I am advised. This is, notoriously, where Peru's criminals come when they want to get lost, a no man's land beyond the remit of the police. But on the inside it is strangely silent, as children sift and crawl with stern concentration. My guide wants me to meet Adelina, one of the child workers who lives and toils here. We walk through a maze of rubbish - I try not to look at the bloated black rats I have been warned about - until we come to a space fenced off with large rusting metal sheets and other cobbled-together trash. I bang on the metal and wait. Eventually a sheet is pulled back, and the sound of oinking emerges from behind a little girl.
Adelina is eight but from her small frame it's hard to believe it. She has dried scraps of something around her mouth and a soiled dress that I am later told is her best, the one she dressed up in specially to meet the gringo journalist. I step in, on to a crunchy carpet of rubbish. There are old rubber ducks black with dirt, detergent containers, hair curlers, rotting food, broken bottles coating the floor. The pen is filled with little pigs and geese and chickens, with the "house" - another few steel sheets - at the back.
Her mother is out. She is always out. She leaves at six o'clock in the morning to work in the next dump down - it's too busy here - and doesn't get back until after Adelina is asleep. The child explains that her own job is to peel the bottle labels off and put them in a sack. They, too, can be used. As for her father, he left long ago. "I see him sometimes but he doesn't want me to talk to him." There is no running water here. They have to buy it in expensive barrels from a water man who comes once a week. It stands in the corner, open, with a thick film of dirt and dead insects on its surface. There is no sewage system either. They throw their faeces out in the rubbish, where other children slip in it. I ask her how often she eats. "Twice a day," she says, unconvincingly, adding, "I don't like to eat every much anyway." She quickly changes the subject by trying to pick up a filthy-white goose from her Noah's Ark for me to stroke.
(snip/...)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1174429.ece~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I also posted an article on the explosive situation confronting Peruvians trying to work in the moutain areas, at the hands of mine owner/operators.
There's a ton of material to study on this subject.
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