I've just been to a scary place. Scary because it is in Guatemala Citys most dodgy part. But even more scary because of the poverty people live in there. The place I visited is the city dump of Guatemala City where thousands of people try to salvage food and a living from what other people have thrown away.

The first thing I noticed were the vultures. They circle in large droves over the dump and compete with the people for anything edible. But even without them it would be easy enough to find the site. Garbage trucks drive there all day and once you have gotten close enough, you have the smell and the sight of flying plastic bags to guide. In front of the dump is a newly erected wall and a gate. The municipality erected these after some unfavourable articles in the press, so they made it harder to see what's going on - which of course is much easier than doing something about the conditions.

Only a few meters away from the dump start the houses. Though houses is really too generous a word. Most dwellings are only corrugated iron, cardboard and nylon. Inside the houses is more garbage. A lot of people don't manage to sell everything they collected and so they store the dirt plastic, glas and metal at home - to be sold another time. The air is thick with the smell of garbage and dust, the ground breathes methan. Respiratory and skin diseases and diseases of the eyes are common. But the people who live here hardly have a choice. Most of them are mayan woman who flew from villages during the civil war (until 1996). Some of them went to the city to try to find their disappeared husbands, others flew the massacres that wiped out entire villages. In the city they didn´t have any work. And since most of them were and are illiterate, the only place to go for them was the garbage dump. How many live there are today is something nobody knows exactly - a few thousand.

But I didn´t go to the Basurero Municipal to see people in misery. The main reason was that I was rather curious about a project I had heard about - Camino Seguro. "Safe Passage" was founded by an American woman five years ago after a Guatemalan friend had showed her the appaling conditions the people live under. Hanley had originally only come to Guatemala to learn Spanish in Antigua. When she saw the kids on the dump she decided to sell everything she had and stay. The first day she handed out food to 40 kids. Today, she is running two day-care centers and sends 400 kids to school, gives them clothes and food. The kids don't live with Camino Seguro though. They
only come for half a day, before or after school to learn and play with the volunteers and teachers. The has swollen to a size where there are 40 Guatemalans and 30 volunteers working at the site; the kids are between two and 15 years old. In the evening they return to their families, who receive a bag of food for every kid that attends school and goes to Camino Seguro afterwards every day. This is the compensation the parents receive since they are missing two hands that could sort through the garbage with them.

At night Zona 3 becomes a no-go area (even during the day, volunteers need a local to go with them whereever they go, else they'd get robbed). Even the police avoids the area at night and only comes with the paramedics in the morning to collect the dead from the street.

I have to say that I was really impressed with Camino Seguro. The project is quite big, amazingly well equipped and seems very well organized. I don't know how well the money is being handled, but after having spoken to a lot of volunteers and Hanley herself for a story I wrote about the dump, I have a really good feeling. So if you are looking for a worth cause to give money to or want to work as a volunteer, check out their website. They are doing amazing work.

On the web:
Safe Passage
The article I wrote for Tagesschau