Olney Resident Journeys to India to Help Wastepickers
By Paul Colombini

I am spending the summer in the slums of New Delhi. It's as far removed from the residential suburbs of my Olney, my hometown, as any place on Earth. Here families squat in bamboo huts surrounded by piles of stinking garbage. Flies swarm everywhere and on everyone. But the slum inhabitants are not forced to live with the garbage: they choose to. They are wastepickers, and the garbage represents their only source of income.

The slums don't shock me, because it's not my first time in India. I spent three years teaching English in Japan and China after graduating from the University of Maryland in 2004. I also traveled throughout India and South East Asia. During this time I came to appreciate the depths of beauty and poverty that coexist in the developing world. This experience led me to the American University in Washington, DC, where I am now pursuing an MA in International Development. 

I'm in Delhi for of a summer internship with The Advocacy Project: a Washington DC based organization that sends students to work on human rights issues abroad. My goal this summer is to raise awareness for Delhi's wastepickers by filming interviews and uploading them on the internet. To do this, I accompany staff from the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group, an organization which supports wastepickers, to meetings with wastepicker communities. These excursions require standing on packed, non-AC buses and flying over dirt roads on motorcycles. Arriving in the wastepicker communities, I explain my project through a translator and ask to record their stories. Returning to the Chintan office, I upload the resulting videos onto Youtube.com, where they can be seen by thousands of people around the world. Although the wastepickers in my videos speak Hindi, I am working with an Indian coworker to provide English translations for the site. 

And so I find myself in the dark interior of a one-room school, the only place in the slum with an electric fan. It's cool inside and I'm glad to escape from the burning Indian summer for a few moments. I've come here to interview a man with ragged clothes and bright, smiling eyes. His name is Abdul Aziz, and he is a wastepicker. Like his neighbors, Aziz is not from the Delhi, but moved here looking for work. When he was unable to find a job, he and his family took up wastepicking to survive. "Four members of my family collect trash… my two sons, my wife and I do door-to-door garbage collection," he says. "Personally I collect from 186 households, usually between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. After collecting all the trash, I segregate it into recyclable and biodegradable piles, and I keep the recyclables in my house to sell. For the biodegradable trash I compost it and sell it."

In this way his family makes about $5 a day.

Wastepickers like Abdual Aziz provide a valuable service to Delhi, which does not have a formal recycling system. Bharati Chaturvedi, Director of the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group estimates that wastepickers recycle about 20% of Delhi's waste. Yet they are often ostracized by local people because of their association with trash, and their children are barred from attending public schools. Moreover, police officers frequently harass wastepickers, calling them scum or thieves and demanding bribes. I'm disgusted when I hear about wastepickers who have been beaten and arrested without charges, held in jail until their families could pay bribes. 

Despite these obstacles, the men and women I film are highly motivated. In my interviews I sense their determination to carry on working towards a better life. Their enthusiasm is contagious and I begin to see them as they see themselves: not as outcasts, but as entrepreneurs. Moreover, I realize that we could all learn from their simple appreciation for having a job and a place to sleep. It's my hope that their voices, now online, will inspire people at home in Olney as they have inspired me.
 

Paul Colombini is an Olney resident and a graduate of Sherwood High School, Class of 1999. He is currently pursuing a Masters degree in International Development at American University in Washington, DC. To learn more about his work with the Delhi wastepickers, visit his web blog.