Landfill Essay

My family and I live in a landfill. We have no money and fight for survival day by day. We live through people’s waste and the things they do not want. We struggle for food and finding a protective shelter. I receive no education a long with the rest of my family. Sleeping night-to-night outside is a struggle. I sleep on a tarp under a number of boxes set up. Mother nature plays a toll on our survival. When it thunderstorms or is below freezing temperatures our life is in danger. I suffer from frostbite and several sicknesses due to the cold. I do not get many choices of food to choose from. I have to either search through the garbage to find something that is rotten and old or find something to kill to eat. The methane gas the landfill creates helps start fires to cook and help keep us warm. We use traps to catch animals such as rats. Struggling for money, if an item that is sent to the landfill is valuable we will try to sell the item or walk to a pawnshop to earn money. The walk takes a very long time so we collect and save the items, once we have enough, we will take a trip to the pawnshop or the streets to sell items. Everyone who sees us stares and judges us. It is embarrassing and very hard for a kid to handle.
We do not get to play sports or activities that normal kids do. We make up our games and fun with the trash. We climb the trash for our jungle gym. We have made up several trash games. My favorite game is to play our style of baseball. Playing these games do put some fun into our lives. I am grateful we have each other because I could not do this alone.
As you can see our lives are a lot different than a normal American lifestyle. We go through struggles that people would not be able to imagine. When a person thinks they can’t survive when their blackberry breaks they do not even realize the troubles people like us face. We are thankful we are a family and can go through these struggles together because in the end that is all