Binson.

I was shocked when I heard his reply. I had asked the question as a conversation starter, but little did I expect the conversation to twist that way.

I had asked Jerry, the little twelve-year old boy who had grown up all his life at the dumpsite, "Do you like Smokey Mountain?"

He smiled at me beautifully before saying, "Yes."

That shocked me. Because next to him, all the other boys who were his neighbours squirmed in disgust.

"Why?" I asked.

" Er..." he cocked his head in a child-like manner, "It is... beautiful."

Beautiful. How could this place filled with trash and ash and flies and dirt be... beautiful? Said the Filipino photographer who had come with us, "He probably has never ever been out of Smokey Mountain before. He probably has never seen what beauty is and so has nothing to compare his home against."

Jerry's response shocked me- what was beautiful about Smokey? But it marked the beginning of my journey in learning how to respect the people, instead of carrying my own mindsets, my own culture and my own sense of what was good and correct, my own sense of superiority to someone else's world.

Smokey mountain. This was his home, where his loved ones were.

Jerry

On my first day at the dumpsite trudging through the mud in the pouring rain with Mio's friends, a little boy in the distance caught our eye. He was limping in the rain, against a backdrop of mountains of trash and smoke.

"Cerebral palsy," I thought resignedly, "Nothing we can do." We went nearer, and I saw his right leg contracted in spasms. Completely naked, the little boy crouched down low, shivering in the cold. The medical student in me leaped out and I began to examine his right leg. On closer inspection, we then saw terribly infected wounds on his injured leg. He was limping severely, not because he was crippled, but because he was in great pain. Yellow pus oozed out from where he was hurt. He was shivering, shivering, shivering, and did not answer any of our questions.

"Can we get him a shirt?" I asked. "Maybe from a store nearby?"

"Anung panggalan mo?" I asked in Tagalog. What is your name?

"Bunso." Pronounced Boon-sor. It means Little One. His real name was Vinsen, pronounced as Binson.

He was shivering, shivering, just as we were, except that while we were clothed, he was as bare as a stone. His brown skin glistened in the chilly rain like brown marble. Mio's Filipino friend, Aji, another photographer whom he had linked up with online and just my age, took off his white shirt and I clothed him.


"Come," I said. He was afraid of us. Aji asked him why he wasn't clothed and he said he had no shirt. We walked him home. Little Bunso in a large oversized shirt.



His home was a little makeshift shelter on low stilts made from wooden cardboard and plastic, situated right in front of the coal-making sheds, where it would get full measure of the noxious fumes. It was next to the coast as well, so any floods (which were common) would make his home most vulnerable. We found his mother, who spoke good English because she had gone to school till she was 15.

I learnt, that many of the people in Smokey Mountain live there not because they are "stupid" or uneducated, but simply because, coal-making is, to them, a decent job, one of integrity, a better alternative to other options, and it was a place they were familiar with, away from the big world out there which had no place for people like them.

Back home, at least they felt accepted.

Binson sat on the floor while we asked his mother to bathe and clothe him. She was a dark, strong woman with a face like a horse and a charming smile. His wounds on his leg were raw, oozing with pus and covered with black soot. Three days old, she said, Got injured from hot coals.

Hot coals. They were everywhere. This was the children's world. Trash heaps were beanbags and coal pieces, their building blocks. Just the next day I was horrified to find four three-year old kids crouching around a small fire and playing with it with bits of plastic they had found.

It was common to find children helping their parents collect coal from the shed. I saw a little girl, who could not be more than 7, scooping up rusty nails with her bare hands, caked with black soot, to return to her parents for reuse. It was no wonder Binson got injured.

"Come, come in, " said his mother warmly. Mio and team waited outside but I did not refuse. Inside, were 2 chairs with torn cushions and a plastic sheet on which they slept on. I watched as she bathed Binson with scooped water from a bucket, with him wincing and grimacing in pain. Tears oozed from his large, soulful eyes. I must have looked a little too hard at their house because she said with a smile, "We are poor."

She was apologizing for being poor.

Water does not come easy. I later learnt from the local pastor, Ps Nickson, that one has to walk out of Smokey Mountain, onto the main highway and queue up for water, dispensed from a horsecart for hours before getting some. It is not even drinking water, but water from a hose which they must use for all their cleaning and bathing and drinking, too. I cringed on hearing that, as I remembered Binson's mother offering us her water to clean our feet which were caked with mud.

From a wooden shelf she pulled out some clothes, but every one was too large for Binson. He had four siblings and there was not enough to go around. He shivered in a large towel wrapped around him. Finally, he was dressed in his father's clothes. The family was reluctant to take him to the clinic.

"We'll come back tomorrow with medication," Aji told them. "But tonight, can we take him out for dinner?"

Mio has worked as a social worker, counsellor and some sort of freelance missionary for many years. He and I both understand that we are not to practise "touristy generosity", for such things can backlash and create an unhealthy reliance and expectation from foreigners. But he had built close ties with some of the people there, and we felt it was all right to take some of them nearby for a simple meal. In the drizzle, Mio carried Binson on his back. He waved cheekily at me from above.

Even then, the children were modest, not taking more than they could eat, gently refusing when we doled out more food for them.

Ricky is a 7-year old boy who, for some reason, endeared himself to me. As we walked along the streets at night and young teenagers whistled at me, he held my hand and agitatedly spoke to me in Tagalog. It was the pastor's wife who told me that he was telling me how he "would not let the big boys court me" and would protect me from them. Later however, he started crying halfway through dinner as some hooligan boys, not more than ten years old, crept in during dinner to threaten to punch him if he did not share his food with them. They stood outside the coffeeshop, perched like hawks, watching us eat.

Ricky and I

Such is the situation in Smokey Mountain. The Sunday School Teacher in me wanted to rise up to teach those bad boys a lesson, but when I looked into their eyes and saw their ragged clothes, I saw that they, too, were poor, hungry and empty inside.

Along the way, we dropped by a pharmacy to buy antiseptic cream and alcohol to clean Binson's wounds. I learnt, that Ps Nickson had started a feeding programme that fed hundreds of children in Smokey Children, but they had hardly enough funds to sustain that, much less start a hygiene programme for the children. Each feeding session, which provides every child aged 4 to 11 a packet of rice and a piece of sausage the size of a small fishcake, costs about $300. They need a continuous supply of $1200 each month to nourish the scrawny children there.

We had a delicious meal that night. We were all famished. We nursed Binson's wounds over the next few days, cooing "Magandang, magandang (be brave)" as he winced and teared from the pain. It frustrated us, me especially, to know that the soot continually infected his wounds and nothing could keep him indoors for long. At one point, I chided him, and him, in his shame, cried and tore himself away from me. Just the day before, we were best friends.

Binson's tears reminded me of what Jerry had shared with me, that Smokey Mountain was beautiful because after all, it was his home, their Home-it was where his friends and family were; His tears reminded me of the pride and dignity the people had in that place- they were kind and polite to me, and made an honest living collecting trash and making charcoal. They were not stealing, merely making a living; His tears reminded me, that I had no right to assume I knew better than them, had no right to barge in and tell them the grand ideas I had to lift them out of their poverty, and demand that they should have a hygiene programme or a new project or another new scheme.

This is their home. God tells us to serve one another in humility, and not to lord over one another in pride and self-righteousness.

The next day, even after I had chided Binson, I found him lying in a soot-covered hammock under a coal shed, with his wounds all covered with a carpet of black smoke. I learnt, that we cannot impose ourselves on the poor. This is their life. This is their charcoal-making, soot-filled, trash-surrounding life which they chose to live in with dignity, and that is the dignity which I, too, must choose to accord them with.

As we walked back home that night, I saw once again how much the poor had taught me about life. As I carried Binson in my arms, I suddenly knew at that moment once again, with renewed conviction, what I wanted to do with my future. I still don't know exactly what God wants me to do post-graduation, but I do have some idea. I do know, that God has called me to transform communities, and to help underprivileged children, not by running the place down and telling the people how to live and what to do, but in God's own gentle and quiet way, to live with them, to understand them and to encourage them, and in doing so, to love them.

That is all.

"Is this not the fast which I choose,

to loosen the bonds of wickedness,

to undo the bands of the yoke,

and to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke?

Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into the house;

when you see the naked, to cover him,

and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?"

-Isaiah 58:66

*photos by Mio and I