Steung Meanchey, Phnom Penh’s city dump, surely won’t top anyone’s list of must-see attractions in Cambodia. But with 4,000 people living there, I felt sure it would make for an interesting story. So I talked my reluctant, slightly alarmed driver Narun into taking me there – and with a vomit-inducing stench, smouldering underground fires spewing toxic smoke and filthy, ragged people of all ages digging around for saleable recyclables, Steung Meanchey was every bit the hell hole I expected it to be.
Robert Carry: An Irishman Abroad
I wandered around the filth, snapping a few photos and basically trying to act like I wasn’t completely horrified by what I saw, as the people who had to live there looked on. Before leaving I decided to have a chat with some of these residents. I didn’t really know where to start, so I just walked up to one of the ramshackle huts – made out of garbage and sitting on top of garbage – and said hello in Khmer to the wary people sitting inside.
The hut I chose was on the periphery of a concentration of larger, equally makeshift shacks which I suppose would constitute the centre of the community. I smiled my way up to the open front of the hut, which was basically a raised platform made out of wooden pallets and posts topped by tattered sheets of blue plastic. A young woman who looked about 18 stood as I approached and immediately began conversing with Narun. I knew the drill. If I wanted to gawk and snap pictures of her and the squalor she lived in, I would have to pay for the privilege.
Once money had changed hands, the girl went back inside. I walked closer to the entrance from where I could see the shack – around the size of a box room in the average Dublin council unit – housed four people. A phenomenally scruffy young lad of about 15 popped his head up from the filthy mat on which he’d been napping his day away and gave me a sporadically toothed smile before plopping back down.
The other occupants were two small children. One was a young girl who sat staring at me in clothes which were little more than dirty rags, and the other was an infant of less than a year old. The youngest was lying naked on the platform, dead to the world. Hundreds of flies crawled undisturbed all over the poor kid. It was probably the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in person.
I struggled through some basic questions and got basic answers in return. Sandar, the eldest girl, was sister to the teenage boy and mother to the two children. They had been living on Steung Meanchey for four years. Yes, it was a dangerous place to live and rats sniffed, scratched and nibbled at them while they slept. Of course disease was rampant because sanitation was non-existent. NGOs occasionally passed through and made tokenistic efforts at improving their lives, but other than that the world left them to rot.
Sandar could have been quite pretty in any other circumstances, but Steung Meanchey had left its mark on her. Her face bore a raw looking scar she says she got when a fellow scavenger accidentally tossed a molten piece of plastic her way.
My discomfort was growing. These people didn’t need me peering at their horrible lives, so I thanked them for their time and, rather pointlessly, wished them well in the future – knowing full well that their future would be as horrible, debased, and nightmarish as their present.
It was a relief to leave, and I dived into the shower as soon as I got back to my hotel – which had magically transformed from basic to opulent during my hours away. The stench I carried with me soon washed down the plug hole, but the images – of forgotten, haggard people digging around in garbage and a filthy, malnourished child being feasted on by angrily buzzing flies – wouldn’t be leaving me any time soon.
To be continued...
