Garbage cans . . .

Something you don't really think about in the US, but you do here! This is our outside garbage can . . .

You take the garbage out and throw it in here. There is a door on the other side of the wall that they come and clean the garbage out of. Sometimes they do it with their hands, sometimes they do it with rakes. Sometimes they have a bigger truck, and sometimes they put it into one of those carts that they pull on their backs while they are walking. It is such a little thing, but it is so different.
Then you look at where the choose to go through the garbage. There is no recycling center like there is in the states. They will just stop on a corner and start sorting through everything. WHY NOT, right? Why not? That is what I have been asking myself a lot while here . . . why not?
There is such an extreme in this country,  you either have extreme wealth, or extreme poverty. There is not really a middle. One of the things that is very common to do for the "extremely poor" is to go to the "garbage holes" here and dig through the garbage to find anything that they can recycle to make a little money.

I think of this every time I put a bottle, can, or cardboard in the trash can. I wish there was something I could do to help these people.

So, next time you take your trash out to your trash can, think about how lucky America is to have such a functioning trash service . . .
These are the things going through my mind . . . I am sure there is more that I could write about this, but I haven't really been able to formulate my words yet.  There is such a drastic difference here that the little things like your outdoor garbage can make you think of these people here in Indonesia (and all over the world) that crawl through, dig through, and live on these garbage dumps just so they can make a few dollars a month.