Today was the first day at Safe Passage. Our tour started at the graveyard overlooking the dump. As we drive further into the graveyard, you can start to smell the dump. It smells like rotting meat and methane and food gone bad. At the edge of the cemetery there is a cliff going down to the dump. This part of the cemetery looks somewhat abandoned; some of the mausoleums have broken glass, so you can see into them. It’s common knowledge that for people who cannot afford to keep their loved ones in the vaults (you have to pay a yearly rent) to have the coffins thrown over the edge of the dump. These are picked through to find jewelry or anything else of value. Half of the tombs have been bashed in and are empty. I can’t help but wonder who was in the tombs, whose family they belonged to. All of the little houses (burial vaults) are in rows with no space to walk between. At the cliff you can see the dump. The ground below is filled with trash that is decomposing. In a far corner you can see some burning methane. I’m told that the dump is not nearly as bad as it used to be. No one under 14 years old is allowed in. All the new rules and regulations are because of the fire of 2005. People used to live in the dump. You can’t really see the toxic river at the bottom of the dump. It is very dangerous. The people working there look like ants… they put their hands on the garbage trucks coming in to claim it as theirs to look through as it unloads.
I have never seen so many birds at once (buzzards). Have you ever dropped a chip or a small piece of fruit and come back later to find it coated in ants? So much so, it doesn’t really look like that chip anymore? That’s how the birds look; but in the sky you think there’s no way there could be more, but you look up and there’s hundreds above you and more around the graveyard outskirts and then a hundred more on the other side. There are cliffs around the dump. It looks boxed in with houses at the top.
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