People. Places. Passion.

At the dump we paired up with Haitian refugees who collect recyclable materials worth a meagre 85 cents per bag. As we drove up I was shocked by how much garbage there actually was. I teamed up with a girl named Madeleine. She was incredibly helpful. As we worked I found I kept picking up the wrong things; opening up bag after bag only to be met with disappointment. But Madeleine had a great eye for finding plastic bottles; she could spot them from miles away.
At one point Madeleine found a battery-operated fan. Her eyes lit up; I think she thought it was going to work. When it didn’t she laughed, as happy as ever, and held it to her face pretending to feel a breeze. After that, Madeleine came across another plastic bottle with water in it. She opened the bottle and started to drink. I stopped her and brought her to the truck for a cup of clean water. It horrifies me that back home we won’t touch water that hasn’t been filtered yet Madeleine was about to drink from a bottle she found at the dump.
My North-American reaction to the garbage was to back away and not touch anything. At times I would turn something over and have to hold my nose for fear of vomiting. I only had to do it for an hour and half. Madeleine does it for 7 hours every day. One look at the determined little girl beside me and I was back at it, digging in the dumps. In my time there, I earned less than a dollar. At my job in Toronto, I would have earned $10 and not worked half as hard. As we drove away I saw Madeleine running to the truck dropping off fresh garbage. I can’t fathom what keeps her going and what keeps her happy working in conditions like that. It makes my problems at home seem so insignificant. Madeleine is my inspiration. If she can work as hard as she does every day for almost nothing then who am I to be complaining about late buses, or long commercial breaks? I may have only helped Madeleine make 50 cents but she has done more for me then she’ll ever know.