The Smokey Mountain

Smokey Mountain is located in what was then Barrio Mandaragat and part of what is now known as Balut, Tondo Manila. It was once a quiet, clean and thriving fishing village until some forty years ago, when the government started dumping Manila's wastes onto the area.As we approach shapes and colors emeout of the grey. What at first seemed to be flocks of seagulls spiraling upward reveal themselves to be cyclones of plastic bags. The huge hill itself appears to shimmer in the heat and then its surface resolves into a slow moving mass of people, hundreds of them, scuttling like termites over a mound. From this distance, Payatas displays a terrible beauty inspiring an amoral wonder at the sheer scale and collective will that built it from the accumulated detritus of millions of lives.Thousands of Manila’s poorest scavenge for recyclables daily at the city’s main waste disposal site in a smouldering district known as “Smokey Mountain.” Rice price spikes have caused greater hardship.