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Collage by PNN Staff

My house was made of many things…

Young resident of Manila Garbage Dump describes "The day of tears"

By Luz Diamonte

It was a day of Many Tears….. I looked up to see a flying plastic bottle of bleach that was on fire. At first I couldn’t move because I was so afraid. Then I heard the screams of all the people I love……Suddenly the mountain had covered the house I have lived in with my mother, my aunt and my four sisters for the last 15 years.

"Kahit mahirap Ra Hindika namen walang bahay o nagugutom"

( "We may be poor but we’re not homeless or hungry")

Pilipino’s have a saying, "We may be poor but we’re not homeless or hungry"

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Our house was made of all things we have found over the years. You see, I work and live at the garbage site in Rizal. Some people in the US must think we are very sad because we live in garbage, but we aren’t.. This was the way we survived. Yes we are very poor. But now we are very poor with no job and no house.

POOR Magazine attempts to cover issues affecting communities of poverty globally as well as locally, rather than the mainstream coverage of this event which was from an "outsider" perspective, i.e., from journalists who reported on the tragic, yet faceless deaths of over 71 very poor people who lived in a garbage dump in Manila. The people died and several more were injured when a Mountain of garbage at the dump site collapsed and caught on fire due to the erosion caused by heavy rains from a typhoon.

POOR attempted to cover this event from the "inside", i.e., one of the survivors, Luz Diamonte’s first-hand account and her very different emphasis on the tragedy.

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