Twelve-year-old Dieu wears a bright-green top sprinkled with yellow flowers as she squats in a pile of garbage with her mother.
The two talk and laugh while their hands work quickly, sorting plastic from the discarded food and waste.
A full bag will bring their family just pennies. One of her brothers sits on a nearby tombstone with his dog. Some families live on this and one other dump in Rach Gia. They are three generations of Cambodians who fled the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in the s. What they eat and what they wear is often from what they find in the trash. For the longest time, the children didn't even know flip-flops were supposed to match.
The parents sell because they are tricked into believing that the buyer has good intentions, that their children will have a promising job and a promising future.
They so badly want to help their sons and daughters escape poverty. The kids are sometimes stolen, too, when they make their long walk into town to sell lottery tickets. If they didn't scream, then they were taken. And the girls were as young as 4.
