discovering home: Landfills, slums, and old friends.

So last unit, we learned where all of our food comes from. This unit, we learned where our food goes when we're done with it.

First in the urban unit, the group visited Kham Bon landfill right here in Khon Kaen. Many of our Thai friends don't even know where the landfill is, as it's tucked away off of a highway in the middle of seemingly nowhere. But here we were, standing on, quite literally, mountains of trash.

As soon as I got out of the van, the stench of rotting food and something I can only describe as just yucky attacked my nostrils. I looked up and towering over me was tons upon tons of waste. After putting on some fisherman's boots, the villagers said that we would have to walk down the road to get to the entrance of the landfill. But apparently, the dumptrucks got lazy one day and just dumped all their trash in the road. So we would have to walk on a road of trash to get to the mountains of trash. Great.

About 3 minutes into the trek, my friend walking in front of me stepped on something and half-rotted tomato and some questionable vomit-looking substance spewed on my left leg. That made for quite an interesting walk around the landfill for the rest of the day for sure. We ended up climbing a mountain of trash, and I stood on top of it feeling like the king of the mountain. You know, that game that we played as elementary school kids. Remember? Anyway, that's neither here nor there. As I looked down on my kingdom of trash, I saw a green field which was... a field of sugarcane and cassava, it seemed. I'm sure the rainwater mixed with the most likely toxic and, again, yucky substances doesn't do those plants justice. Or so I thought until our tour guide decided to pick up a Thai melon off its vine on the ground. He said the melon grew thanks to the water right beside the landfill.

Oh. Okay. Makes total sense.

We then went back to the entrance to the landfill to look at the incinerator which looked pretty dangerous... You know, not to mention the blood vials that were haphazardly strewn around it.

Picture thanks to one of our program facilitators. I was too creeped out to take one.

Then, the villagers explained that lots of hospital waste was dumped there, too. As we walked along the trail, we couldn't help but notice all the catheters that were either visible under the flimsy piece of red plastic that the villagers used to mark the hospital waste or obviously poking out of the ground. We climbed a smaller mountain of trash when my right boot got caught in a boot trap. Yes, that meant that my boot fell off into the trash, and I took one careless step in the pile of... well, I don't know what. That was also extremely uncomfortable, to say the least.

We finally got to our host families' houses. There, the smell of the landfill was gone! Living arrangements weren't bad either. And Sam, my roommate for the urban unit, is a vegetarian like me, so we had super delicious food there, surprisingly, including the best som tum I've ever had. Other students got to eat some grasshoppers and veggies that the families found in the landfill.

Oh, didn't I mention that? Our families were all scavengers, meaning they rake through ALL of the trash that comes into the landfill looking for plastic bottles, aluminum cans, glass bottles, plastic bags, copper wire, and whatever else can be sold to be recycled. So the next day, we all helped our families scavenge. Sam was absolutely incredible at tearing the bags open to find even the smallest bits of plastic as well as adept at using the two-pronged rake-looking thing to easily move away food waste, dirty diapers, and other things that were just distractions to finding the good stuff. I, on the other hand, worked for about two out of the 5 total hours and spent the last 3 hours gagging and trying not to vomit. I know, I'm weaksauce. But during the time that I did work, I felt like I was really straining myself. Whenever a new garbage truck came by, tens of villagers flocked behind it and crazily raked through the fresh grossness. Some of the students found huge red, poisonous centipedes, and others of us just found dirty diapers and maggots everywhere. I fell into the latter category. Even enduring the sweltering heat and unbearable smell all day and night, these villagers take shifts; some scavenge during the day, and some do the deed at night. And to think that these people do this every day? I couldn't even imagine.

Sadly, we only spent 2.5 days with this community. I really wanted to stay longer, I really did. But my stomach was telling me otherwise. So we moved on and spent the other half of the day exchanging with the villagers in the Nong Waeng Slum community. Slums can be defined by the fact that the residents don't technically own the land but reside on the premises. In this particular community, no one owned the land, and it was built around railroad tracks. Now, the railway company "needs" to build a high-speed railway, so they are evicting the residents, who couldn't get a lease on the land. Though the government is helping them find new land, many are bitter that they have to leave the place that they've always called home. Here are some pictaurz.

Last, we spent 2 days and a night in the slum community close-by called Theparak-1. Though I'm not sure why it's a slum because many of the residents owned the land. I stayed with a woman who singlehandedly supports a family of 2 daughters and 1 granddaughter through cooking and selling at a local market. Oh, yeah, and she's also a public health representative who goes around her community to see if children need any immunizations or if the elderly need any special medicines. Then, she delivers super detailed reports to the government. Oh, yeah, and did I mention that she only has a 4th grade education? Basically, homegirl was a badass. Freaking. Badass.

Sam and I got to help her at the market. And guess who else came? Our homestay kids from Suan Sanuk school! YEAAAAH. It was certainly nice to have them around! They helped out a lot with the families, too, even though they didn't have to. Love the kids. More pictures!