Another homework assignment...Several days ago, I spent the morning scavenging bottles, cans, and mysterious types of plastic (The answer when I asked my host mother, "Want it?" was as likely to be "No" as "Yes") with members of the scavenging community. It was a good experience--hard work and strangely rewarding. It was surprisingly easy to adapt to the warm garbage smell and ignore the unappealing contents of the bags we ripped open. In the afternoon, I interviewed with Meh Toi, one of the women in the community.When I ask Meh Toi if I can interview her, she is standing over her two-year-old grandson. I watch as she stretches the scraps of his popped balloon into a sphere, tying a miniature new balloon. He stops frowning and, still clutching her skirt, reaches up to take it.
Meh Toi moved with her grandmother to Khombone Noy Landfill when she was ten. After almost thirty-five years of scavenging, she stays home to take care of Tone, her grandson, while her three daughters work in nearby Khon Kaen city.
Scavenging has provided a fairly reliable source of income for Meh Toi’s family. They have tried other things. They lived in Bangkok for a while, making decorative mirrors. Organizations have come to the community, teaching construction and other skills. But, she says, “every time we go back to scavenging.”
“I am used to living here. Nobody wants to live with a landfill, but I have no choice. This is my work, my career. Most people think that trash is really dirty and smelly, but I think about money. Money is on its way.”
I ask what you can learn about someone from their trash. Meh Toi responds, “We don’t analyze the situation. We open the bag and take what we can get.”
“People like to live here because it is not far from work…They just walk to the landfill.” But Meh Toi draws a clear line between her home and her work. “I always keep my house clean. The landfill is on that side...When I throw out trash, I collect it and put it in another bag so it looks like there’s nothing in it…When someone’s digging through it, they’ll know it’s trash and not something valuable.”
But the landfill is not strictly confined to “that side.” With the exception of food, she and her husband find most of the things they need at the landfill. “If I find something that can be cleaned and used, I will get it.” Whether it is the practice of scavenging or the fact that “we don’t have the money to buy it,” Meh Toi’s actions at home, like tying up the broken balloon, reveal a mentality of reuse. “I will throw it away when it really doesn’t work,” she says, “If the handle broke but the lid still covers, it doesn’t matter.” Like working in the landfill, Meh Toi’s practice of reusing meets practical needs.
Meh Toi stopped going to school when she moved to Khombone Noy. Although she wanted to continue, “poor people in those days finished fourth grade and didn’t have any opportunity to continue studying. In the past, there wasn’t a Department of Education to give money for loans.”
I ask more and more challenging questions. Meh Toi laughs. “I have three translators!” she says, pointing to the Thai translator, the American translator, and her sister, who is sitting nearby. “Sometimes the questions are easy but sometimes I cannot understand. I don’t have the knowledge. Sometimes I understand but I cannot describe,” she tells me. “Most people who are uneducated cannot have a wide perspective,” Meh Toi concludes. “When I had a test in school, I would have to come back and do it again.” Meh Toi’s explanation of her answers—why she thinks they aren’t good or important—betrays a lack of confidence I didn’t expect.
“Most people here didn’t go to school at all,” her sister tells me, “After they have children, they do everything to support their children to go to school.” Meh Toi, especially, has always made her children’s education a priority. She and her husband left Bangkok and returned to Khombone Noy because her daughter wanted to go to school. Scavenging meant money, and money meant education. Through the years, Meh Toi has nurtured the next generation—of people, and of things rescued from the landfill. Her youngest daughter graduated from middle school, her middle daughter from high school, and her oldest daughter from university.
Meh Toi’s success, though, means her children don’t live next door, like her sister does, or around the corner, like her parents do. Once a week, she rides into Khon Kaen city to stay with her daughters.
In November, Meh Toi goes to the Khon Kaen silk festival. “What do you like about the silk festival?’ I ask. “I see what’s happening outside,” she answers, “But actually I don’t like it because I spend a lot of money.” “On what?” I ask. “I buy delicious food. Whatever the children want I buy for them.” I ask when she is happiest. “When all of the family is together and eating, happiness, a lot.”
Working at the landfill has provided for Meh Toi and her family. It has given them enough to eat, enough to help her daughters through school, and enough to teach another generation—her grandson—“to grow up and be a good person.” And although she is proud that as a scavenger she did honest work, she tells me, “It’s very challenging. I never thought I would work like this.”
Meh Toi is pragmatic. The first thing she says when I ask what she would change in her life is “finish the construction on my house.” She laughs again. “There was a project from the government to give land to families if they wanted it. Six rais of land.” Now, she says, that government support is gone.
“I live here with trouble,” Meh Toi tells me. “I want people to come from outside to help the community to be better. Help me live easier. The public—in the city, the outside—should know about this place.”
Paw Kham, a scavenger and leader in his community, surveys the Khombone Noy Landfill in Khon Kaen, Thailand.
The Khombone Noy Landfill receives 200 tons of waste each day. Gathered in such quantities, it is hard not to compare trash to something powerful and geological. Here the strata of 44 years of dumping emerge as older trash decomposes and leaches liquid mixed with toxic chemicals.
Scavengers comb through the river of trash that has just been unloaded.
The scavengers rake deftly through heaps of trash, holding their tools like a farmer might hold a hoe.
Meh Bi covers her arms, legs and head before going to work. For a farmer, these actions protect from sun, water, and insects; for a scavenger, from grime, fumes and syringes. When she is done, only Meh Bi’s hands and eyes will show, but not everyone has the masks, boots and gloves they need to protect themselves.
Meh Toi finds everything she needs in the landfill.
Reusing is a way of life. When her grandson pops his balloon, Meh Toi makes another one out of the scraps.
Meh Bi and Paw Neyoum’s makeshift garden. The villagers say the chemical-laced water from the landfill kills the rice crop. Smoke from the nearby incinerator, they think, makes vegetable plants look sickly. Although most of the scavengers plan to work in the landfill forever, many said they would like to have land to farm.
Bang, Meh Bi’s son, relaxes at home. If their families need the extra income, children might start working in the landfill as young as three or four. Bang’s father, Paw Neyoum says, “I want my kids to do something else, but if they have no other choice they will come back to scavenging.”
