For my little brother

My Promise

"Sometimes being a brother is even better than being a superhero." — Marc Brown

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The ground was warm and unsettling, about as warm as the air that sat above it. The crunching of plastic was audible as I walked, stirring whatever was hiding underneath the surface. In the distance, I could see smoke rising, a weak breeze blowing some of it over at me. The strong, pungent smell of burning copper, plastics, toxicity, hovered over me like a cloud, filling my lungs. It was like waving a gigantic flag, signalling for Death to come and pay us an early visit.

I dug my hands into the earth — polluted dirt as they say — and groped around looking for anything worth extracting. Bottles. Containers. Milk jugs. Bubble wrap, even. Whatever that was thrown out and discarded by its original owner was a bounty, at best the ability to afford food for another day. Anything that wasn't too badly damaged or could be easily cleaned up and repaired was gathered and collected to be sold later on.

My hands came across something rough, its sides filled with grooves and patterns. I pulled, slowly at first, and then with a sharp yank, using my feet as support to keep myself upright as I leaned backwards to get at whatever I had found. Finally, it popped free, sending me tumbling down the hill. I fortunately had little to travel before I reached the bottom.

I looked at my hands. A plastic jug, otherwise intact except for a small tear near the spout. I placed it gently into a bag filled with my total finds for the day and resumed searching, digging, "scavenging".

It's a life nobody wants to live. Nobody came here because they loved the smell and sight of garbage. They came because they had a choice, a very simple one: they could sit in their homes and starve, or go to the mountains of litter and recycle whatever they can find, reselling them to provide for their empty stomachs. Many of these people had families, and only those who were sane would live here if it meant their children could at least be fed.

I looked up. The sun was beginning to set, staining the clouds in the sky with a dirty yellow. I gathered my findings into my arms and began to descend the hill. "Smokey Mountain", they called it, named for the smoke that frequently arose from the hill as tires, copper, wood, even coal, were burned by the locals. The air is toxic. Every minute I stand breathing it kills me a little bit inside. But I would die faster if I avoided the hill altogether, for the hill meant money. Money to buy food. The hill often provided us with food itself. Food, discarded food, from the various restaurants and food courts across the city. It is cleaned and cooked, and then eaten. We call it pagpag, and if it's cleaned and cooked properly, it is safe to eat.

The day begins early in the morning, when the garbage trucks come and unload their cargo onto the mountain, having collected it from around the city overnight. Scavengers — people who make their living picking from the scraps of Smokey Mountain — flock to the trucks like sheep to a shepherd, lost souls to Jesus, as the trucks brought them what they needed to survive. The early bird gets the best worms, while those who arrive late can only hope there is something valuable still buried deep beneath the filth. They had to work quickly as well, collecting as much as their arms could carry before workmen, seated in large digging machines, shovelled the garbage into barges docked nearby. They were hoping to prevent another Smokey Mountain from appearing, after the original dump was closed by the government several years ago. Trying to avoid another artificial hill that echoed the sounds of wasted, discarded souls, a shameful symbol of the poverty in the city.

I placed my loot beside a group of women, who were counting and sorting the heaps of garbage into different bags. Everything had to be carefully organized and measured for scavengers to receive a fair payment for their work. On a good, profitable day, a scavenger could hope to make up to 500 pesos. It was usually enough to feed themselves and their family for at least one more day. A woman began to go through the things I had found, examining everything closely for rejects. Some things she set aside, knowing that they were far too mangled and damaged to be reused. A number of others she tossed into the bags, ready to see life again. Finally, she reached into her pockets, counted 10 pesos, and handed it to me. "God bless your family," she said.