Around the World :: Payatas

Published October 15, 2010

It’s true what they said about one man’s trash being another man’s treasure. This photo was taken in Payatas, Philippines, a mountainous landfill of garbage that a small population of squatters unfortunately call home. It is one of the largest slums in the world where the daily grind for children as young as 4, is rummaging through garbage for food for their family and small treasures they can sell on the streets. The walls of garbage stand a few hundred feet high just outside of Manila and the biggest atrocity is the reality that some of these squatters will never know a world outside these confines of waste.

I had a chance to visit the site in 2004 when I studied abroad in the Philippines and it truly was a shocking eye opener — it was one of those moments where you stop and realize that your day to day stresses are trivial compared to the daily reality others face elsewhere in the world.