Hi!!

just a bit of a warning, this entry is gonna be a bit heavy and not fun and light hearted as you'd expect travel blogs to be...but that is because its about my visit to the dump..a place of extreme poverty.

the dump is located just outside managua, nicaraguas capital city. it is called the dump because that is exacty what it is-a rubbish dump. it is monstrous, so big, that is has now become home to about 2000 people, young and old. the people originally moved to the dump due to poor living in managua and they saw the dump as a place to get food scraps and recycled clothing and items such as toys. People spend their days at the dump sifting through rubbish looking for these things and cleaning plastic bags so they can make a little bit of money reselling them. they work ten times harder than you or me and make miniscukle amounts of money. The only salvation is the dump is a little school that was build there to try and offer the children a brighter hope. Unfortunately, only a handful of kids actually get to go to school as their parents think it better for them to work and try and make money selling the plastic. It is hard work and requires the kids to spend their days looking through the massive rubbish piles and then scrubbing plastic. Because there is not much income for the peopler of the dump, young girls are forced to prostitute themselves and usually sell themselves to garbage truck drivers or locals on the streets outside the dump. many of the girls are infected with HIV because of this. This is no life for children, hence why an orphanage is being built. the orphanage has been completely funded by donations, raised by my awesome friend Sam Martin, he has raised about 600 thousand US which is astoundiong, but of course, like any new development, needs even more funding to maintain and keep expanding it. There will be little houses of 9 girls who will have one 'mother' who will look after them as a normal mother would. these mothers will be employed by the orphanage. the girls will also attend half days at school to educate them. i have a photo of the orphanage and a photo of the dump so you can see what they are living in now and how amazing their living will be when they move on july 1st.

the school in the dump is awesome. i was lucky enough to attend the school on a sunday, they helf a beautiful church service and after we got to play with the kids who were just amazing and so happy. i was also fortunate enough to be able to phogotaph the people living in the dump, so please have a look at my photos to see these children. the children from the school are living in the dump too of course, in fact, one little boy was looking at the photos on my camera that i took walking through the dump and he showed me his house on the photograph...

it was an amazing experience and what this orphanage will do for these kids cannot be described in words.

take care

zoe

xoxo