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“I thought they were mountains – but theywere rubbish heaps as big as the Bombay Hills.People were living there...”Boyd’s trips with Tear Fund were life changingWhen Boyd Maxwell of Pukekohe joined Tear Fund as anAdvocate three years ago, he wasn’t prepared for the impact ofseeing thousands of people living on rubbish dumps in India, orthe same struggle for survival in the Philippines.“I had seen the images on TV and believed in what Tear Fund wasdoing, but to actually experience it has meant I will never be thesame again,” says Boyd. “Two years ago I went to India with TearFund for three weeks, to New Delhi, Mumbai and Hydrebad. WhatI experienced was both humbling and inspiring. It was my first timein slums, and despite a preparatory DVD before our group of peoplefrom all over New Zealand left, to be honest, I wasn’t prepared forit.”123“We were welcomed in Delhi by a group of beautifully dressedchildren, singing and dancing – they were just delightful. Thenwe walked across the road to the slums where they lived. Tenthousand people were living there, on one big rubbish dump.Homes were made from bits of tin for the roof with bags hangingover the sides – up to eight people would live there. There’s asmell that’s hard to explain – no electricity, no water, no sewerage.We found out that the pigs around the place were what cleanedup the sewerage. There are always fires burning – that’s for thebodies of those who have died the day before. These people areconsidered the ‘Untouchables,’ they are born there and die there,with no one keeping any records – that’s hard to understand in ourorganised society. Anyone can end up there, by going out of work,for example.And yet, in those appalling conditions, there are the mostinspiring people working. One amazing doctor has trained over80 women who can’t read or write to be midwives and to take careof minor medical things. This doctor works like that in over 16slums.My role as an Advocate was to observe what is being doneby Tear Fund and Compassion and to come back to report onthe work. Sometimes people say that the problem is too big,that nothing can change it – but the difference in the lives offamilies who are helped and for the children who are sponsored isenormous. People in Tear Fund centres are bright with hope; theyare receiving something that gives them not just survival, but a reallife and future.I’ve just come back from the Philippines – the same slums, thesame situation. One family we visited was a woman with fourchildren and her sister with one child living in a tiny area the sizeof a small bathroom. The kids slept in one bed and at night themother crawled up into a hole in the roof. The mother was ableto help her mother in law, who sold vegetables and she was paidin unsold vegetables, but they had no money at all. That ‘bit of20 Support your local community www.elocal.co.nz page 22