"Aitch-Aye!" they call. "Recycling!" They come every morning. Some have wooden carts with bicycle wheels that they push in front of them. Some just have an old rice sack slung over one shoulder. They seldom have shoes. They are the recyclers of Phnom Penh. They walk through neighborhoods digging through trash and buying recyclables from Phnom Penh housewives to resell at the trash dump for eventual export to Vietnam.
I had seen her before – a tiny woman with very dark skin from so much time in the sun walking the streets. Her clothes are faded to a non-descript brown. She is so small it is hard for me to imagine that she can push her wooden cart very far, but
we live miles from the dump, so she must. A dirty checkered cloth is strung across the cart as a makeshift hammock, but she is carrying her little son who looks about one, but is probably older. Usually I see her in the morning, but it was already late afternoon this time. She looked really tired and only had a few cans in the bottom of her cart. Something in her downcast demeanor touched me. Maybe it was because I am mother with a toddler who insists on being carried too. In any event, she wasn't calling out, so I called out to her from my front door. "Older Sister!" She didn't respond. Thinking she might not have heard me, I called again, "Sister Recycler!" She kept trudging. I caught the eye of a moto taxi driver who was closer to her and he spoke to her.
"The foreigner is calling you." he said.
"I don't have any money left to buy anything." she said without even turning her head to look at him.
"The foreigner will give it to you." he told her, so she turned and came toward me.
"Wait a minute." I told her and ran in the house. Luckily, I am not the most fastidious housekeeper, so I had quite a few bags of cans and soda bottles to give her. I also had a bag of cheap plastic toys, mostly broken, that I was getting rid of that I tossed in as well. Her eyes widened and she thanked me several times. And her otherwise listless little boy smiled when he saw the toys. My God, I thought, what depths of poverty must she know to be so grateful to be receiving my trash? "It's nothing," I told her, "In my country, I would have to pay you to take it away." I don't think she believed me.
A few days later, my next door neighbor gave me a small well-intentioned lecture. "You have a good heart, but you shouldn't give your stuff to those recyclers," she said. "They are all theives and you are encouraging them to come back. Give it to the city trash collectors instead [who are salaried and wear uniforms]." Her comments struck me. First, because she knew that we don't charge for our recyclables and it is embarassing to me to be known around the neighborhood for being generous because I don't charge one fortieth of a penny to have my trash taken away. And secondly, because I recognise her misguided attitude towards people struggling with poverty in myself as well. Whether I glamorize the poor or dismiss them as lazy, dishonest, or deserving of their fate, either way I have failed to recognize their essential individual human dignity – that spark that God made in His own image. I am grateful for small encounters that God uses to remind me of His Reality. Please pray for the recyclers of Phnom Penh, and for me too.
Grace and Peace,
Sam (for the Baker Evens)
