Yesterday the theme for the day was Poverty. For our theme that day the Glimpsers all had a poverty seminar so we could learn a little of how Nicaragua came to be a third world country. Later on as a group, we all visited the dump in Leon. Visiting the city dump was something I´ve never experienced before. It opened my eyes to how people really do have to live off of a dollar a day and have a lot of hardships. I went in there feeling bad for the people picking around the garbage to find recycables in order to make money, but when we spoke to them something surprising happened. They weren´t afraid of the job they had or how poor they were. They took pride in having a job and finding something to do in order to make money. It made me think that even if they´re in a bad situation they make the most of it and are happy with what they have. I thought it was amazing how even though they don´t have a lot if they have “more recycables” then they need, they help out other families even when they don´t have enough themselves. We all had a great time listening to all of the speakers in the dump. After our field trip we came back to the Hostal, ate, had free time, and then watched a documentary. The documentary is called Wasteland and we all loved it. It´s about an artist named Vik who travels to Rios´ largest landfill and finds a couple of people with many hardships in their life who work there. He decides he wants to change these people lives and he does so by taking a photoshoot of them and then making them come work for him. He buys all recycled items and makes them everyone place the items over the picture he took of them. In the end, they would go up to the roof and see their work of art. It was a picture made from all recycables. He sells the pictures and gives the people money for their hard work and they´re pictures he sold. He changes how they viewed the world and that if they do work hard enough they can get out the dump and something more in life. We all had a discussion about the movie after and realized too that they weren´t ashamed of who they were and moved forward. I´m most proud of the group for being very respectful at the dump yesterday. Even if it was smelly and flies were all around us. Being El Lider Del Dia (Leader Of The Day) made me more courageous/responsible and really did give me a chance to feel like a leader.
