Small Glimpse Into Lilian’s Life at the Garbage Dump!

Every day she wakes up to the reeking smell of putrefying garbage; having slept the whole night on a dirty mattress thrown on a dirt floor, under a “tent” made of plastic bags; does not know what or even if she will have something to eat that day. Still she thanks God for one more day of life she has been given.

Her world is surrounded by paint thinner and glue addicts; who would rather spend the night at the garbage dump and on the streets, risking their lives, rather than going back to a home where a violent stepfather awaits to beat them up and take whatever money they were able to make during the day, so he can go out and get drunk. Unfortunately there are also young girls who have been raped at an early age, put in harms-way by their own mothers and/or family members; men at these dumps act as if they have the right to have sex with them; they become a type of public property; these are young girls who grow up not knowing that they have a right to say no. Violent men who at night get into fights out of rage and take a machete out and in anger try to kill each other. The worth of a life seems to be just an idea in places like these!

Her son Criston fer (14), joined her today. He is the one that dives deep into each garbage trunk and pulls out the most recyclable material. By the time he is done all his clothes are completely dirty, his skin has the rancid sticky black spots from the liquids of decomposing foods, he has impregnated on him the stinking smell of garbage; under his nails he has the black accumulated dirt; to make matters worse, it can be days before Criston Fer can have access to clean water to be able to clean up. He takes food into his mouth, with hands covered with the filth of all the stuff he has touched. Paint thinner and glue addictions become a way to escape the bleak reality that teenagers like these, face everyday.

Will you partner with this family in prayer? In finances so you can sponsor one child /teenager to go to school? Help sponsor this mother to buy clean water and food so that she will be able to meet her family's basic needs?