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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Standing in Solidarity with the Children of the Dump

A group of high school students and adults from Lopez Island, Washington has been with us this week. Like all of the delegations that come to the CDCA, the Lopez Island group has been learning about Nicaragua both by listening to speakers, and also through work: the students have been digging a hole for a septic tank with the folks at the Genesis spinning co-op.

Yesterday I accompanied the Lopez group to visit Los Quinchos, a project working with children in La Chureca, the Managua municipal dump. Los Quinchos is not a project of the CDCA, so what is the purpose of taking a group to visit La Chureca?

La Chureca is home to thousands of people – families who live off the trash of others: they not only sell the recyclables they find in the landfill (metals, glass, plastic), but they also make their houses from what they find (cardboard, plastic), they wear what they find, and they even eat what they find. La Chureca is a place on the edge – of the city (the trash is pushed into Lake Managua), and of society: the people who live there are in constant danger from the smoke and dust; from the garbage trucks and bulldozers which often run people over; from each other – theft, drug use, prostitution and violence are rampant; and from the trash itself. Several years ago two preschool age children, sent by their parents to work in the garbage, died when they ate chocolates they found that had been laced with rat poison.

In the midst of the dump is the Quinchos project, in a small house perched on the edge of a contaminated lagoon that works with the children of La Chureca, in particular working to rescue children who sniff glue. The Quinchos project at La Chureca feeds the children who go there a daily meal, teaches them to weave hammocks, make jewelry, helps with homework, teaches hygiene, bathes them, dresses wounds and gives nebulizer treatments for breathing problems, which are very common. Though most kids come for the food, those who will give up glue sniffing can often be moved to the Quinchos Filter House in Managua where they receive counseling, then on to the farm in the country, to a half-way house in Granada, and eventually back into society, where many of them work rescuing street children like themselves. Forty percent of the Quinchos staff members are graduates of the program, and in 18 years they have rescued more than 3,000 children from the streets of Managua.

Today there are many children at Los Quinchos. The Lopez Island group colors with the small children, the kids at Los Quinchos love rough housing, making paper airplanes, showing off the bracelets they’ve made. Little Jocelyn physically latches herself on to one person after another: for many of these children, the affection they receive at Los Quinchos is more important than the schooling, more necessary even than the food.

And for the group from Lopez Island…what is the purpose of their visit to La Chureca?

We as human beings try to avoid pain – seeing another person in a desperate situation is a painful emotional experience for us, and we naturally want to avoid that. If we don’t have to look into the face of a desperately poor person and recognize them as fellow human beings, then we don’t have feel that pain of connection with them. Poverty robs the poor of dignity, of identity.

But when we are in solidarity with the poor, we acknowledge their existence. By going to the dump, seeing and feeling and hearing and smelling where the children of La Chureca live, by talking and playing with those children, by touching them, they allow them the dignity to exist. The poor have faces. The faces of the poor are the faces of Jocelyn, and Juan Carlos and Daniel. What is solidarity? Solidarity is those who have – land, money, education, resources: the folks from Lopez Island – crossing over to join those who have not – the children of La Chureca. They do not cross over to “save” those children, but rather to join them. The delegation from Lopez Island not only saw the dump where so many children live, they not only heard the stories of those children, they not only looked into those children’s faces and recognized humanity. They also hugged the children, drew pictures with them, took them on piggy back rides, laughed with them, wove bracelets with them…they crossed over and joined the children of La Chureca for a little while, and stood in solidarity with them. -- Becca