ex + ploit + ed

...........to make use of selfishly or unethically.

Last Thursday I saw the most glaring example of this I have ever seen in my life. I took the mission team to the Quito dump. When my wife visited there in 2005 the dump "workers" were living there with their children. They would sort through the garbage with babies on their back.

In 2008 they are no longer allowed to live at the dump. But the government is still happy to "employ" them. Okay so what's with "workers" and "employ" being in parenthesis?

Here is their story.

There are 300 workers at the dump. The day shift is from 7:00am to 6:00pm; the night shift goes from 7:00pm to 6:00am. A long work day by any standards. They sort through the garbage for recyclables like plastics and aluminum. And when I say "sort" I don't mean they stand by a conveyor belt plucking off the material. They literally stand in the garbage.......up to their knees or higher.........all the while watching they are not run over by the front end loader or the next truckload coming in. Oh and for those of you who have never been to Ecuador? You can't flush toilet paper there. It goes in the garbage.

No doubt a long, difficult, dangerous daily task. Disease and feces all around. So a rough day but why the "exploited" title? After all, it is a job. A way to feed their families, right? Well, sort of.

These workers are required to show up day in and day out and do the work, just like any other job. If not they are fired. But they have no salary or hourly rate. They get no pay. They work and sort eleven hours a day just for the right to sort, collect and take recyclables. Most of the workers are family units that hand the days' take over to the family head who cashes in and splits up the money.

What a racket this government has going here. Free labor and they can claim to the international community they are recycling!

The team and I stood briefly on a platform about a hundred feet above the activity. It looked like ants scurrying below. I am ashamed to even say it that way. I was embarrassed to view them. I felt like I was invading a sacred space of God.

I felt like I was exploiting them by my presence.


"He lifts the poor from the dust and the needy from the garbage dump. He sets
them among princes, placing them in the seats of honor. For all the earth is the Lord's, and he has set the world in order." (1 Samuel 2:8 NLT)

Really? Sorry Lord but the world didn't look in order at that garbage dump. It looked to me like the cycle of poverty is alive and well.