Sifting through the Trash

It's not unusual to hear the clip clop of horse hooves below from our living room window. Some of the poorest people of Montevideo (who likely live in the suburbs) go around from garbage bin to garbage bin searching for trash to collect.


Sometimes it's men collecting garbage. Sometimes it's women. Sometimes it's teenagers. And sometimes it's children. I think it's heartbreaking to see a 5 year old child riding in a wagon, waiting for his big brother to finish diving in the big green dumpster nearby. What kind of future will these children have?

The quantity of horse drawn garbage collectors is surprisingly high for a modern day capital city. Haggard horses pulling rotting wooden carts trot by while cars zoom past them on 4 lane highways. They seem strangely out of place, yet many low income families have resorted to scavenging for trash as a primary source of income.


On the brighter side of things (if there is a brighter side), these trash-sifters take care of most of the city's recycling. For example, we don't have a means to recycle near our house, so we put all of our empty plastic containers in a seperate bag for garbage sorters to come through and collect them with greater ease. We feel this is the most likely way that our shampoo bottles and coca cola liters will get resold and reused. They provide an important public service in this regard.

The situation for the trash sifters isn't always completely bad (not to diminish the real hardships that come hand in hand with poverty). One of the most absurd things I've seen thus far is a man driving his horse and cart piled full of refuse while talking on his cell phone. His cell phone! The irony is striking.

Camp for High School Students

Earlier this week I helped at a camp in Carmelo for students who attend Liceo Jubilar. Liceo Jubilar is the high school that I visited last week in a neighborhood where the poverty was almost unimaginable. The school is doing admirable developmental work in the community.


The students at the camp were amazing. They know they have many challenges to face in order to meet their life-goals, but they were very open and willing to talk about their situations. Their realities are very different than any group I've worked with before (at camps or in the classroom).


My heart goes out to them. I want to see them overcome their circumstances. While everything might seem against them, they still have the potential to be profoundly successful. When I look at these students I see great potential. They can do anything they set their mind to. They just need the love, encouragement, and education that all children should be afforded.


At the camp, another Fulbrighter and I taught the students about the human values in the US Constitution and about American music. In the photo you can see the students learning how to swing dance.


I also taught them how to dance some hip hop (because I'm clearly an expert on the subject from the semester of Street Jam classes I took at my university's rec center last year, cough, cough). Awkward dancing aside, camp turned out to be quite a bit of fun!

Suburb Slums

I visited a liceo (high school) in the suburbs of Montevideo today. The suburbs in Uruguay do not mean the same thing as they do in the United States.


The suburbs are not full of middle class families with 2.5 kids, neatly mowed lawns, and a minivan in the driveway. The suburbs in Uruguay are where the poorest of the poor live. I didn't have my camera with me, but I did capture a few quick shots with my phone. I wish I could show you more.


The poverty is shocking--appalling even. I could never imagine living in such conditions. When people say that Uruguay is a third world country I generally think tisk, tisk, you don't know what you are talking about, Montevideo is relatively wealthy. Most people make enough money to live comfortably. But not in the suburbs. Not in the slums of the city.


When I see such utter poverty, I can't conscientiously go on living the way I am. I cannot not do anything. It's reprehensible that there are children living in such conditions. What can I do? What can you do? What can we do?

Because something needs to be done!

Arms Race or Poverty Reduction?

Uruguay's president, Tabre Vasquez, is in the US this week at the very end of his term. He met with Hillary Clinton and the article that gets printed in the Associated Press has something to do about an arms race in South America.


Way to steal the spotlight, Venezuela, as usual. Chavez starts yelling about the US presence in Colombia and rounds up 2.2 billion dollars to purchase weapons and all the talk focused on how out of control he is. As printed, "Vazquez said he feared that an arms race in the region could divert funds from economic development in the poor countries of the region." And how true that is. Instead of playing with guns, why don't we earmark some funds for social justice, economic reform, or poverty reduction?

This article, Uruguay: A Chance to Leave Poverty Behind suggests that adequate funding for programs like "Plan de Equidad" (aimed at reducing poverty in the nation) implemented by the Ministry of Social Development can have some real results. For example, almost 12 percent of the Uruguay's population that was considered under the poverty line 4 years ago, no longer is and extreme poverty rates dropped from 4 percent in 2004 to 1.5 percent in 2008. The plan includes "initiatives like the food purchase card, new homeless shelters, the expansion of free health coverage, literacy and social inclusion programmes, and programmes for generating decent, stable employment, improving housing, providing free dental care, and offering free eye operations." While these services do have a socialist bent, they appear to be working (along with economic reform) to help the poor in Uruguay, and they are certainly better than investing an outrageous regional arms race.