I am looking down at the glitter speckling my arms, however, I don’t know that I really want to wash the flashing spots off. The sight brings up images of dear children who let their emotions flow free; who have a deep, raw love for anyone who gives them the time of day. This annoyingly adhered glitter reflects memories of a mother and father sorting garbage as a means to an end. This is the Puerto Barrios Dump.
Outside the sister towns of Puerto Barrios and Santo Tomas is the dump that serves the surrounding area. Of course, this is a fact of life anywhere in the world. But it’s particularly ugly here. Throughout the day you can go and witness a truck throw the transmission into reverse and roll back into the field of refuse and cast aside ‘necessities’ to deposit it’s burden into the processing plant to be recycled.
They descend on the truck as it coughs up the contents of its depths, and begin to sort with vigor. The goal: Gather enough plastic or other recyclables to form a unit of material, to be picked up by a third party collector for the recycling plant, and receive compensation that amounts to cents. This is the source of provision for the families of the dump.
This is the way of life. Find value wherever you can, enjoy whatever you can, and receive love from whomever you can. But they are not feeding insatiable passions. The families that live in the ‘recyclable’ lean-tos that line the path that encircles the ever-heaving colossus of rubbish, alongside their high-value bundles-o-plastic, these families are not gorging insatiable passions that many of us feed in pure ignorance. No, they ration themselves, not wasting a single bite of the nourishment of what is of real value in life.
As we were fiercely embraced by unashamedly glitter doused children such as Dunia, Carlos, Angel, Mirna, Sandra, and others after only 24 hours of limited contact and made vampire jokes about the mysterious glitter, I imagined a child sorting through the latest arrival of
Enjoy every little thing. It is not less because it is little. But little does not become more until it is enjoyed.
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