Columban lay missionary Sunhee Kim writes about her ministry to children trapped in deplorable conditions at a dump in the Philippines.
In January 2015, I began a new ministry in Payatas, Quezon City, Philippines, known as the Second Smokey Mountain. The original is in Tondo, Manila – a landfill that had been used for more than forty years. The landfill and the rubbish dumps are the most important means of living for local residents who collect the garbage, sell the recyclable wastes to the junk shops and salvage materials to make recycled mattresses and pillows. Children as young as eight years of age work there every day to eke out a living. I meet some of these children every Thursday at a chapel close to the dump where free lunches are served.
While the volunteers are cooking lunch, children attend a catechism class, have their hair cut at the barbershop and attend a simple clinic where I distribute emergency medicines for colds, fevers and indigestion. I treat minor wounds on a regular basis, as infection is rampant due to the unsanitary conditions in which they children work.
One day when I was walking around the landfill with a friend, I heard “ate – ate – Sunny” from a crowd of children at the end of an alley. I followed the sound and discovered that they were some of the children I meet every week at lunchtime. When I got close to them, I noticed that they were not playing but working, separating the plastic and the scrap iron from the trash heap and making feed for the pigs by mixing water and food waste collected at the landfill. I could no longer see the children as playful. They looked different. There was no evidence of childhood. They were hard at work among the rotting rubbish that might provide them with enough money to buy a meal for the day.
Meeting the children at their work had a profound effect on me. I saw the reality of their daily lives, which deprives them of a childhood. I thank God that Columban lay missionaries can make a small difference to the lives of these children, and I thank our Columban supporters who make it possible.
Columban lay missionary Sunhee (Sunny) Kim from Korea has worked in the Philippines for six years.