Notes from Haiti

Haiti's largest trash dump is also a receptacle for some of Port-au-Prince's young street kids who prowl and scavenge the dump for scrap metal in cheap Chinese sandals, and sometimes, barefeet. Armed with old rice bags and plastic 5-gallon buckets, they find scrap metal by following the bulldozer that pushes mountains beyond mountains of trash around the dump. The bulldozer turns over freshly exposed scrap metal underneath, rotting, hot fermenting trash to the kids who promptly place it in their sacks and pales while diligently avoiding being crushed by the bulldozer. If the children find enough scrap metal to sell, they can eek out a meal a day.