Crunch (6 page)

The caravan soon left the dorm and wormed its way back through the city, then veering off to take the bouncy, rock-strewn dirt roads.

Even though the vans' windows were shut tight against the dust, the dump broadcasted itself with its strong, pungent odor long before it was ever seen.

“Yuck! What's that smell?” Holly said, wrinkling her nose.

“The sweet smell of trash,” Eddie grinned. “Rotting trash…the aroma of a working landfill.”

“I'm gonna gag!” Monica declared.

“Ah, don't be such a baby,” Jenna said airily.

Bethany said nothing. She stared silently out the window at the broken skeletons of cars along the road, the tiny shacks that were dug into steep dusty hillsides, and the treeless, brown landscape. She thought of the little boy and the other children who had to face this every day, and she hoped like crazy that they could make some kind of difference.

As the caravan of vans pulled behind a trash truck and waited until it was clear to pass, Eddie began to tell them how he had discovered this mini-city in the bowels of the public dump.

“I had heard there were people living near the dump, but I didn't know where it was. I asked around and got lots of different answers because the dump tends to move locations. Once they have filled up a canyon with trash, they go find another canyon. So, finally it comes to me—kind of like God knocking on my forehead—if you want to find an active dump, try following a dump truck. I did, and it led me right to the dump and to the people who live near it.”

The dump truck moved out, opening the way for the vans, and they continued on. The smell of the landfill strengthened. As the vans rounded the corner, the youth group from Hawaii could see dozens of dump trucks busily depositing their loads while tractors plowed the new refuse into the mountains of garbage. Overhead, what seemed to be thousands of seagulls glided above the piles of garbage like vultures, looking for a leftover that could become dinner.

“Look! There's something going on in the trash,” Holly said, her face pressed against the window.

“There are
people
digging through the trash piles! They have bags around them,” Monica said with a note of disbelief.

“Um, weren't you listening?” Jenna said. “These are the people Eddie's been telling us about.”

The caravan of vans created a stir among the black dots digging through the trash. Suddenly a number of them—all small—streamed out of the trash piles toward the vans.

“They're kids!” Bethany said, finally finding her voice.

“I think you're right, Dorothy,” Kai said as he stared somberly out the window.

Some of the children appeared to be as young as five or six. Their hands and arms were black with filth, their clothes were soiled beyond imagination, and their shoes were terribly worn and dark with scum. But their eyes beamed with brightness, Bethany noticed. And they laughed and chattered as if they were getting ready to attend a birthday party.

“I can't believe what I'm seeing,” Dano said.

The vans pulled up next to a large concrete slab, which apparently had once been the foundation of a warehouse.

Today, Eddie informed them, it would be their bathhouse.

Another team, who had come over for the day from San Diego, had already erected an ingenious contraption made of PVC pipes and tarps that would serve to separate the makeshift rooms for the little boys and girls.

A team of leaders, many of them Mexicans who worked with Eddie's ministry, were guiding the process.

As Bethany got out of the van, she saw a collection of tiny buildings crammed together in the barren corner of the landfill. They seemed to be made of wooden pallets and roofed with blue tarp.

Bethany grabbed Eddie's arm as he walked by. “What are those?” she asked, pointing to the shacks.

“Those are the homes of the people who live and work in the dump,” Eddie replied simply before moving on to help one of the teams.

Sure enough, erupting from the hovels were scores of small children, running as fast as their little legs could carry them. They were followed by women and a few teens.

The sight of immense poverty along with the nauseating smell of the dump threatened to overwhelm Bethany. For a brief moment she thought of retreating to the van. Then she reminded herself why she was there and quickly plunged into the crowd of filthy children who were as taken aback by her missing limb as she was by their grime.

Eddie called out to them in Spanish, and soon they were forming two lines: one for boys, the other for the girls. Meanwhile, Bethany and her team struggled to finish erecting the bathhouse. Others brought in sacks of clean used clothes, towels, detergent, and five-gallon jugs of hot water.

“How did they know we were coming?” Bethany asked Eddie as he handed her a stack of towels.

“I stopped by last week and told them we would be here today. They have come to trust our word.”

“But what if it rained or something? The road to this place would be impossible to travel on.”

“We would find a way,” Eddie answered with a look of grim determination. “We promised them, and with people who don't have much hope in life, our promises mean everything.”

Soon, tables were set up with piles of clothing. Just outside the bathhouse a station was erected for those found to be infested with lice. Plastic gloves and bottles of medicine designed to kill the creatures were laid out.

Inside the door of the bathhouse, a table held a huge stack of towels. Each towel had a Velcro strip sown into it. Bethany overheard Eddie tell Sarah that the towels were the work of love from a wheelchair-bound woman who had once come for a day visit. The woman had been so touched by the ministry of the bathhouse, she had decided she had to help. Buying and sewing the strips of Velcro on hundreds of towels had drained her small savings—not to mention her strength—but she felt it was only right to help preserve the modesty and dignity of the children.

Bethany couldn't help but think that maybe someday Jesus would thank this woman for providing him with a towel.

A small stool, a basin of water, and a bristle brush were placed at the entrance to each shower room.

“I need someone who is willing to wash feet!” Sarah called out.

A couple of the girls gave each other curious looks and then raised their hands. Several guys followed suit.

“After the kids change into a towel and put their dirty clothes in a bag, they will come here for a foot washing,” Sarah instructed. “Make sure to use the scrubber. Some of these kids have feet that are thick with dirt.”

The girls nodded.

“When their feet are clean, you can have them get in line for a shower. One of Eddie's staff will handle the rest.”

The shower consisted of a large metal wash tub with a curtain on a circular plastic pipe base. The shower water came from a generator-powered pump placed in a five-gallon container of warm water.

The shower device was a simple sprayer, like one would find on a kitchen sink, controlled by a staff member who was experienced at rationing just enough water for each child.

Bethany couldn't help thinking that the five-minute showers they were allowed at the dorm would be a luxury here. And the long hot showers taken at home would be like going to heaven.

“See if you can sort these clothes out into piles of large, medium, and small,” Sarah said, leading Bethany to the clothing table. “When a little girl comes to the table, let her pick out clothes that she thinks will fit and take her to the changing room. She will have her old clothes in a bag so make sure she goes home with them too.”

Bethany blinked, trying to take in all that Sarah had quickly rattled off.

“And don't worry. We'll get you some help as soon as everything settles down a little. We have lots and lots of kids who need baths!”

As soon as the crew finished loading supplies into the makeshift bathhouses, kids started moving through the process as if it were a well-oiled machine.

Malia, who had pulled uku duty, carefully inspected the head of each girl for the small white eggs clinging to hair follicles that are the telltale sign of head lice. (She had pulled her own long hair up into a twist on top of her head…just to be safe.)

Children who had lice were pulled out of line and taken to a table where their hair was washed with a powerful anti-lice shampoo. They were told to sit on a bench for fifteen minutes before being allowed back in line.

Inside the bathhouse, the foot-scrubbing girls were astonished at the amount of thick grime that worked its way into the feet of the children from standing in the refuse. None had socks, they told Bethany, and their shoes had been reduced to scraps.

Soon, the kids were coming through the line so quickly that Bethany did not have much chance to even try to talk to them. Occasionally she would ask a name, and every once in a while a small child would innocently point to the knotted sleeve of Bethany's arm and say something in Spanish. Bethany guessed it was a question about her arm.

Bethany would point to her missing arm and say “Tiburon” while watching the little eyes open in surprise.

Sometimes a child would come with a message from a worker printed in black felt pen on her hand. It might read:
Needs shoes,
which was a signal for Bethany that this particular girl's shoes were so bad that replacements needed to be found.

A large box of used children's shoes under the clothing table served as the shoe store.

“We have no socks!” Bethany called out when trying to find some to go with shoes she was giving to a little girl.

“We run out of socks quickly. People just don't donate them much,” one of Eddie and Maggie's staff members called back to her. Bethany felt like crying.

“Okay, I guess you go sockless, young lady,” she said softly to a pretty but uncomprehending girl of around seven.

“Your relief is here! Go take a break,” Jenna announced as the little girl took off out the door with her new shoes.

Bethany went over the routine with Jenna and then stepped outside for a breath of fresh air—
as fresh as it could be at a dump
, she thought.

Just past the bathhouse, several girls from her group had set up an impromptu beauty salon and were busy painting the nails of giggling, happy little girls and combing out their thick black hair, which they decorated with ribbon and clips.

The roar of the trash trucks in the distance mixed with the squawking seagulls and the laughter and babbling of children. These sounds enveloped Bethany as she walked along, and she found herself smiling. She had done a lot of things in her fifteen years. Many of them seemed thrilling or important, but as she breathed in the tainted air and surveyed the makeshift bathhouse and the damp, happy children, she thought that just maybe what she had been a part of today was far more important then anything she had ever accomplished.

It felt right and good. And for the little child that no longer slept in filthy clothes, ate with blackened hands, or itched from ukus, she knew it made a difference—a real difference.

She just wished—

“Wanna see the ‘town' Bethany?” Eddie asked, startling her from her thoughts.

Bethany bit her lip and looked behind her at the beehive of activity at the bathhouse.

“Don't worry,” Eddie said with a smile. “There are plenty of workers today! A lot of the time we give baths with just our own workers. Come on, I'll show you around. Sarah said she wanted to come too.”

Eddie signaled Sarah, and she joined the pair as they walked over the hard-packed road imbedded with trash.

Crowded together on the edge of the landfill were dozens of small shacks. Some had tin roofs; some had a mixture of tar paper and blue tarp.

A modest amount of electricity had been illicitly rigged from a nearby power line by a dangerous but ingenious system of extension cords.

“These people make their living by digging through the trash for aluminum cans, bottles, or anything they can sell,” Eddie explained as they walked. “They follow the dump around. When this one fills up, they will all move to the new dump site.”

“Why do the children work? Shouldn't they be in school?”

“Well, they should be in school, but it's complicated here. Going to school in Mexico involves some expenses, and these people can't afford much. In addition, the children are needed to help with the scavenging. Going to school would mean not enough money coming in to survive. It's a tough, cruel world here.”

Eyes followed the trio as they slowly walked through the maze of shanties. Many times Eddie, who was loved and known in this slum, stopped to talk to someone along the way. Each time he stopped, Bethany had the strangest feeling someone was watching her.

“It seems news travels fast, Bethany. I've had to tell the short version of the shark attack three or four times now,” Eddie laughed.

A small boy of about five darted between two homes and into their path, kicking the sad ragged remains of a soccer ball.

Bethany, who had played soccer seriously as a young girl, immediately jumped into action, deftly stealing the ball away from the little boy.

The boy laughed delightedly as he went after his ball. And it wasn't until he turned around that Bethany realized who he was.

“Eduardo!” she said happily, and he smiled and kicked the ball around her with the precision of a surgeon.

Bethany's soccer skills were somewhat rusty, and she did all she could to get and keep control of the ball. But every time she came in contact with the ball, the little scrapper joyously attacked as if he were in a national tournament.

Eddie watched the pair laughing and sparing along the dusty trash-strewn road.

“This kid is pretty good!” Bethany exclaimed with a shout to Eddie and Sarah.

Finally Eduardo stole the ball from Bethany and dribbled it to a hole in a pallet fence that served as his makeshift goal.