Dumpsite Dilemma

29th November (Sat)


Day after day we interact and play with the Riverkids students, warm up to their cheerful smiles and affectionate gestures. But have we looked beyond these happy smiles and truly learnt about their family backgrounds? I teach music lessons at Blum and to my knowledge, most of the Blum children live at the railway slums. It was only when I visited these children’s homes during family portrait sessions that I truly saw the bare living conditions there. Families comprising 5 to 6 members, sometimes more, had to squeeze within four walls, share one toilet and one bug-infested mattress. And here we’re only talking about the Railway slum community. What about the lives of the slum community at the dump site? Today was when we found out.


Putrid. Pungent. Overwhelming. These are three words to describe the stench at the dump site. Fortunately there were strong winds to blow the stench away periodically so the smell was quite bearable as we embarked on a treacherous journey through the heaps of rubbish. The spoils at the dumpsite were rather interesting: soft toys, Nike school bags, rotten food, shards of glass from beer bottles as well as plastic bottles amidst piles of cow dung planted strategically here and there. Actually, “heaps” isn’t the word to describe the amount of rubbish there; “mountains” would be more apt. And if you were not careful, you could step into holes of black, rancid waters (just as Shaun did, and emerged rather triumphant at that).


Then we stopped. About 8 metres away from where we were standing, garbage trucks had just arrived and trailing after these giant vehicles were hordes of people from the slum community, desperately clamoring and competing for spoils like plastic bottles and tin cans in the heaps of rubbish with their bare hands. The garbage trucks simply drove past the people as if they were part of the rubbish themselves. It was a rather disturbing sight but the people went about their tasks so mechanically I began to think, maybe the slum community saw picking rubbish as part of their destiny and their permanent fate.


And there were the children too. Five-year-old young boys and girls, who would already be at school learning their ABCs in Singapore, were heaving white rice sacks almost twice their size, engrossed in rummaging through the rubbish looking for their “treasures”, treasures that WE throw away without second thoughts. It was heartrending and painful to watch, especially with the children walking barefooted on the hazardous paths strewn with sharp pieces of glasses sticking out in every possible direction. Weren’t their parents in the least concerned?


As the clouds of thick grey smoke and dust blew across our faces, they carried a host of questions for us to ponder about. Do these people actually have a choice? Can they ever break out of the poverty cycle? What about the thoughts of these children? These questions seem rhetorical because the answer is probably evident to most of us. Perhaps not in the next few years, or even the next few decades. But hopefully, slowly but surely, they will get there.



As the bus drove off past the slum community, three young children were playing by the roadside, smiling at us as they continued engaging in their activities. I can’t help thinking that these smiles reflected a tinge of helplessness and poignancy.



Written By: Valerie Koh RJC (ISLE 2008)