The Apology, Part II (“The Dump”)

In The Apology, Part I it was an apology to a very amazing young lady named Dominique who’s here in Africa to go through a teaching program at Iris Ministries, but she’s also lending a volunteer hand in helping out on the documentary film. To say what we’ve seen has been challenging would be a gross understatement. Most of us could not imagine the amount of poverty we’ve been exposed to. Even the word, “poverty” Isn’t strong enough to describe what I’ve seen in the last month in Africa, but espically at the place they call, The Dump.

As I was a little adopted boy around the age of three or four, someone took this amazing picture of me with my new family. It's a classic black and white photo with my mom and dad dressed to the nines. My dad and I wore traditional dark suits (a matching tiny one for me) of the mid 60’s with skinny ties, sports coat, and either a dickey (fake hanker chief and a real one for my father) protruding from our sport coat pockets. My mother wore a business, yet casual, white button down coat that was form fitting and respectful in a June Cleaver kind of way. Her dress was a flowered colored pattern and even though the photo is black and white, because I have a photography background (thank you V.Bernucci HS photo teacher) I know the color was green and white, plus you can see the leaves. The photo has a sense of expectation and privilege as if we were The Cleavers living in Mayberry R.F.D (what does RFD stand for anyway?).

I know I am mixing T.V. shows here, but sense there were no people of color, unlike my mother’s dress, or my high school photo teacher, I didn’t need a photography class to realize they were white and I wasn't. But, did it matter to me? Seriously it didn't, I felt like our family was like that, and by the looks of this picture so did my parents. There is a sense of confidence coming from that photo saying, "our refrigerator will not go empty, there is an opportunity at a job (or at creating an actual business as both did)", even for two high school educated African-Americans in the mid-60’s, if you worked hard or as my generation calls it today, “Legalized Hustlin,” you had a chance at success. And that's just what they did with two seperate business Ideas that they planned to come together as one.

Shaft and Superfly with no crime attached, my Mom was Pam Grier with no gun, no mini-skirt, but a plan…a business plan that would create an opportunity that still bares fruit today; Shaft, that was pops, who had a separate business plan, it wasn’t stocks, it wasn’t bonds, it was better…it was property, as much as he could gobble up as if the properties were criminals being arrested by a leather jacket wearing detective named John Shaft, and they were awesome, trust me when I tell you this. And with my head tilted to the side with my Kojak Telly Savalis hat on I expected nothing less. I had a sense of privilege to my look as if to say, “Please, don’t mess with us, we are the epitome of a renaissance family”, our own Harlem Renaissance on the west coast, doves up, rims spinning, sun shining, “You know it.” We were in the sense of hip hop magazines today…Straight Ballin! At least that’s how I saw it, my dad and mom who are in heaven would, and probably are, not agreeing with my version of how I saw things, but hey this is my story in my own little T.V. show world. (Love you mom, love you dad)

It was awesome and I knew nothing else and actually thought this was normal and not just experienced by only 1/3 of the world, and I certainly didn’t know that it was only experienced by maybe ten to fifteen percent (being gracious) of people who looked like me in the 60’s (check your unemployment numbers). Why, a variety of reasons, labor skills, hope, aspirations, education, opportunity, hopelessness, disappointment, and absolute racism that was real, just not in my little Leave it to Beaver world, at least not for a long time. I had no idea that advertisers were not cattering to me in commercials, advertisements, and magazines, I just didn't notice it because we had all the things that were advertised. I think I actually wondered why there was a Jet or an Ebony magainze for black people. As a matter of fact, reading those periodicals clued me into what was really going on. And my major attitude in this picture said, “I expect this type of living for the rest of my life.” Yes, I’ve gained some knowledge since this picture, things have not gone exactly as my parents experienced and I am not that naïve anymore, or am I ? Maybe my expectations are the same because I still dream of having my head tilted to the side as if I was driving a Cadillac with Pam Grier next to me, today or back in the 60’s, Pam is still smokin hot, wearing a leather Shaft Jacket (I actually own one, “Brett, you didn’t take it did you?” (Brett and Kendhall, The real Pam Grier and Shaft in my life).

But no amount of confidence, leather Shaft coats, Pam Grier, or afro sheen and leopard skin mini skirts would prepare them, or me for what I saw while driving down into “The Dump.” That kid with his confidence so high in that picture would be shocked and devistated by what he saw as a grown man never having witnessed such horrible poor conditions in his entire life. And, to be passing person after person, as we went into the bowels of this place, who looked like me, the kid in that picture, was just plain gut wrenching as the car went lower and lower into pure and utter poverty that you couldn’t even production design for a movie, it would be too overwhelming.

The description your about to read is what brought out all the anger in me that was poorly directed towards Dominique which prompted the apology. But you must go on this ride to The Dump of hell to experience it with me. I honestly am grateful for the experience of seeing it, but Lord knows I wish I would not have the possibility of writing about it (but thank God I can), which would mean that this amount of poverty would not exist, but instead happy families in front of their houses taking pictures like my family did and all looking renaissance like. In other words, I wish I could write about families that looked like mine, felt like mine, and were as successful as mine, but now I would be living in Mayberry RFD, or with The Cleavers, for that is just not the reality of the majority of this planet, just our little corner of the world. The trash for all of Maputo, Mozambique goes in this area called The Dump.

It’s supposed to be a land fill, and my friend Norberto (a worker for Iris) says it’s actually improved but it’s hard to tell as the gray barbed wire wall seems to go on for a mile down the road on my right as it protrudes into infinity as far as I can see. The sot has warn on the wall so much that it seems as if taggers (spray paint vandals) had marked the wall with some type of colorless permanent spray can of primer color, or a film crew production designer had added marks to it so it looked worse, as if it needed to. As we pulled up to the entrance, and the people who live at The Dump saw our cinematographer (Andy) with the camera in his hand, they vehemently shook their fingers for us to stop filming as they hit the truck we were riding in and things felt a little bit unsafe. Like, back up and "get the H" out of unsafe.

I remained as calm as possible as Norberto, who got out of the car, knew this was going to happen because he told me that many film crews and photographers had come here and exploited them for photos as the people who lived there dug food out of The Dump and ate it. They actually saw their pictures in magazines later on that were discarded in The Dump and had blamed Iris Ministries and Norberto, who is from Maputo, for this incident. But in no time Norberto had explained to them what the real deal was behind him bringing us to view and record on film The Dump and that he had nothing to do with the other incident.

I must admit that I feared for Norberto who is a wiry, dark skin handsome twenty something young man (think Taye Diggs) who has much poise about him in the midst of what could have been an ugly situation where it felt like if it we were in Los Angeles, there would have been an altercation unless someone knew how to handle themselves…and thank God he knew how. For as I prepared myself to actually get out of the car it’s just one of many moments in my life where I went (working with Mr.Dogg Pound), am I actually here…and involved in this?

As we drove and proceeded past the gray barb wired wall we could see thirty football fields of land fill trash as we drove down, as if in Norbertos car we were in a submarine, moving our way towards the depths of the bottom of pure garbage and trash to us, an opportunity at food or commerce for the people who lived there. Here is the definition of what a landfill is supposed to be.

Web definitions for landfill
A method for final disposal of solid waste on land. The refuse is spread and compacted and a cover of soil applied so that effects on the environment (including public health and safety) are minimized. Under current regulations, landfills are required to have liners and leachate treatment systems to prevent contamination of ground water and surface waters.

Trust me when I say that the mere fact that I am telling you that we drove down into the land fill means that it wasn’t done in a proper manner. As we continued into the garbage as if Charlton Heston himself, in his Moses outfit, had parted the Red Sea as the walls of garbage being held up by God’s breath as they got taller and taller.

Finally we got to the bottom of what was two to three floors of garbage and made a right turn as cement block house after house was right next to the dump on the other side of a make shift street of garbage. When we finally pulled up to what looked like a shed type structure that had three large branches of a tree as the door entrance with no door, there was an Iris ministries sign hanging above the structure. I honestly thought, “Why would they put a storage unit down here?” But as I exited the car I heard the worship music coming out of this so called building as hundreds of voices sang familiar songs in a different language as it finally hit me that Iris ministries had set up a church right where the people live, in the dump and the ministry was actually in full swing when we arrived late for church. Mama Heidi, that’s what we all call her (see www.irismin.org), was already inside preaching, I could hear her speaking Portuguese inside the structure.

I stood for a moment as the stench woofed over my nose and my feet were frozen as if I was getting them bronzed in front of the Chinese Man theatre in Hollywood, but this clay under my feet was an imprint of garbage and not a star on the walk of fame. I held my composure for about twenty seconds as I took about five steps towards the entrance and paused. Norberto walked around to the other side of the car to put his hand on my shoulder as I stood and stared into a sea of people in the foreground and a never ending converging line into infinity of garbage that just never ended horizontally to my left or right, and vertically from my feet to the sky. Needless to say the tears were streaming down my face as child after child greeted me with a smile that I was not able to respond to right away.

Norberto comforted me by telling me that I am doing ok and that the first time he came with Mama Heidi that he immediately got sick to his stomach, “Your doing good” he told me, “It’s okay,” as he just said a prayer in my ear that seemed to calm me down. It reminded me of the scene from Glory with Denzel Washington being whipped for leaving the barracks. When the whip first hit him he was tough, but as the lashed kept coming he slowly drifted off as one tear, then another, followed by pain hit his soul and buckled his knees.

I asked The Lord to give me the best composure I could muster up. And for me that was to find a kid I could love, hold hands with, sit with, etc. And God delivered a very small boy who just came up to me smiling as I grabbed his hand. It was as if this little boy, who lived there, was guiding me through the doors of the church and saying, “It’s okay, It’s okay.” He took me to the left of the congregation as I found a space on the floor on top of some matts that some men graciously moved over to make room for me. The little boy and I sat down together as he continually smiled and played with my hand in his. Mama Heidi was handing out communion on a small plastic plate when she got to me and gave me the plate and asked me to hand it out to everyone in my area. “Good, I have something to do now.” After that was completed, and there was bread and grape juice left, the little boy started to eat the remainder of the plate and just smiled. He was so funny just smiling and smiling. I actually cracked a smile, then a laugh, and he laughed as well. And there you have the one thing that I must report on for sure. The people of Maputo, and all of Mozambique, no matter how poor, no matter if they live in the dump, or just outside the walls of the dump have an amazing resilience for anything that life brings their way. And like this little boy they are a happy people who have nothing and still praise God, still smile, and just like my families picture, have much hope in the midst of nothing, and when I say nothing, I mean nothing. It looks nothing like my families photo that I described, and yet their spirit might even surpass that photo. Norberto is proof of it, did he come from The Dump, no, but trust me when I tell you that he came from the streets of Maputo and his life by no means was easy at all against the toughest standards you could find in the USA, it couldn’t hold a candle to how he grew up. But by the Grace of God there he goes preaching, playing guitar, praising The Lord, and putting his hand on my shoulder as tear after tear come down my cheek and he tells me, “It’s okay, your doing good, your doing good.”

Is this meant to make you feel bad, no. It’s to give you a sense of how 2/3’s of the world really lives, it’s to get you to realized how God gives you the absolute privilege of being privileged, not for just living in the good old USA, but to be living anywhere besides the 2/3’s of the earth where poverty is as common as a cold. It’s to get you to be thankful, grateful, and maybe, just maybe, like I have the privilege of doing, thank you Lord, of seeing what I’ve seen in another area of the world, and maybe doing something to help just the little boy who’s grabbing your hand in a garbage dump and smiling, thank God for that little hand and that little boy who deserves an apology for even having to live like he does. But hope is in the air as wave after wave of worship songs are sung by people who live in The Dump, and I am thankful for being able to worship with them in the best church I’ve ever been to in my life, the church by The Dump. Thank God I had a chance to have church with them and communion, it was truly overwhelming and amazing all at the same time, I am privileged and honored to be in their midst on this Sunday morning of God’s pure worship.

Peace and Blessings