Smokey Mountain: Manila's Divine Comedy

Manila’s dumpsites are not just sites where waste is being dumped. All dumpsites offer means for survival for many people. Payatas in the north of Manila provides ‘survival’ for some 100,000 people. Smoky Mountain (bordering Manila’s port) is smaller but the same inhumanity exists there. Whole families live on the dumpsite all their lives. Father Giovanni Gentilin, a remarkable Italian priest who has been working in Tondo for 18 years, tells us that life expectancy is around 40 years for people living on the dumpsite.

The dumpsite in itself offers a glimpse of Dante Alighieri’s hell. As in Dante’s work, different layers of hell exist but they are all horrifying. Some people have small Sari-Sari stores on Smokey Mountain, others run a videoke machine or a ‘bar’ with a billiard table but most people who live in shacks on the dumpsite earn their living by collecting and selecting rubbish. All live in dirt, sharing the scarce space with millions of flies and armadas of rats and breathing a pestilent, highly toxic air. Father Giovanni calls it the ‘the smell of the politicians’ who are all good Catholics or Christians.

Every day is a fight for survival. Once the waste is being brought in or shifted, hundreds of scavengers fight for getting the best parts of it. Thanks to Father Giovanni’s work, many scavengers now have rubber boots to avoid stepping into sharp metal; he and his supporters run a number of projects to alleviate the burden of such life by offering basic health care and scholarships for the kids.

All photos from Smokey Mountain, Tondo, Metro Manila, October 2007.

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