Home
One very good guy: Martin Sheen
I hate being so negative week after week. (If only the world wouldn't serve up so many fools for my consideration!) So I looked around and found someone to admire--Martin Sheen, last seen as your president on "The West Wing." Read this and cheer:
AMY ELDON: When you visited the Payatas garbage dump in the Philippines, why did it affect you so much that you felt compelled to do something to help?
MARTIN SHEEN: Well, you know, it doesn't take long in that environment to realize that there's a very great need right in front of you. I remember the closer we got to the dump the smell was so overwhelming that I began to retch, and I had to stifle and try and get beyond that. And I remember I was walking along the entrance with Father Shay and I said to him, "We're going to have to pay for this." And what I meant was that the first world is going to have to account for this sort of horrible poverty in our midst. We have to, first of all, become aware of it. We have to take responsibility for it. And then we have to do something about it for our own freedom, for our own salvation, for our own humanity. I just think that the only way we come to ourselves is through each other. And there are so many people in the third world suffering so horribly right now, and we are so focused on ourselves and our culture that a lot of things are showing up in our culture that are making it impossible for us to focus on others. We're so self-focused.
AE: Right. I think if we showed them these people at the garbage dump that people in America would care.
MS: Yes, they would. Absolutely, they would. I don't think that people in America are really given enough information about the Third World. I remember Gandhi said something so profound about violence and non-violence. He said, "The greatest form of violence is poverty." And that's something we don't often think about. We think of violence as being conflict and fighting and wars and so forth, but the most ongoing horrific measure of violence is in the horrible poverty of the Third World… and the poverty in the United States as well. We have our own Third World here. And we have to first become aware of that and how to help and solve that.
You know, the Western culture projects the good life--security and comfort--as if that were a reality, you know. But I think that you also have to gauge how much happiness or joy, or how many contented people there are in the West. I mean we have the highest drug addiction. We have the highest divorce rate, the highest child abuse. We have the highest child pornography business going on in this country. We have so much juvenile delinquency, so much gun violence, so much family violence that these are all a projection of how confused and how self-involved we are. And it's hard for us to realize someone else's pain when we're so involved in our self-inflicted pain.
But once you experience Third World poverty, you're really changed forever, if you're at all open to it, because we're all united in our common humanity. And we are so made as to feel something for people who are in pain. It's not possible to be human and to be unaffected by what you see in the third world.
AE: And how did it change you personally seeing that poverty, that violence of poverty?
MS: The moment that I saw Payatas, I was overwhelmed emotionally, spiritually, and physically. As I mentioned, it was so hard to get beyond the stench of the place. And this particular garbage dump is much different than other garbage dumps in the third word because this one accepts everything.
And the scavengers, and that's what they're called, are like the untouchables of India in the Philippines. They're not considered on any social level whatsoever. They're just scavengers. Little children from barely toddler ages are in this horrible place, and when the garbage trucks come in, they go along a particular path, and they're followed by these children--these scavengers--who climb up on the trucks and throw garbage off that they think might be useful: plastics, any kinds of trinkets or anything to eat, anything useful.
And as you follow these children along, you realize they are walking in sludge, this horrific contaminated sludge that sometimes measures a foot deep and sometimes a few inches. And I began to realize the difference between this dump and other dumps that I had visited in third world. The difference is over the years, they had begun to introduce disposable diapers into the Third World, which is something entirely new. And this is in the last 15-20 years. And so those diapers are included in the trash, and they have contaminated this entire plot of land. All these acres of land are contaminated with human feces. And the smell is horrific.
And I thought to myself after the tour, I thought: My God, if I lived here, if I was confined to this hell what is the one thing that I might look forward to at the end of a day of scavenging through this mountain of hell? And I thought: Well, it might just be simply to take a bath. And so that's when I contacted Bill Keyes, and I asked him if we could build a bathhouse there.
AE: Initially it started with just some showers, and now it's really the heart of the center of the community. There are children playing there. And you got the pool and kids dancing and mothers congregating.
MS: Yeah. So it's become a community center, which is what we had hoped it would be. And it's very interesting because the people in the community came up with their own idea of how they wanted to run this place once it was built. And that was to make it a private club. It wasn't just open and free to the public. You had to buy a membership.
Now, mind you, a membership was like one peso a year, which is less than eight cents American. And the reason they did that was so that they would have a sense of ownership, hence, responsibility for the place and all the activity that went on there. And they were very wise in doing that because that way they maintained their dignity. The point is that they own it. They run it. It belongs to them. It is not a charitable thing
AMY ELDON: When you visited the Payatas garbage dump in the Philippines, why did it affect you so much that you felt compelled to do something to help?
MARTIN SHEEN: Well, you know, it doesn't take long in that environment to realize that there's a very great need right in front of you. I remember the closer we got to the dump the smell was so overwhelming that I began to retch, and I had to stifle and try and get beyond that. And I remember I was walking along the entrance with Father Shay and I said to him, "We're going to have to pay for this." And what I meant was that the first world is going to have to account for this sort of horrible poverty in our midst. We have to, first of all, become aware of it. We have to take responsibility for it. And then we have to do something about it for our own freedom, for our own salvation, for our own humanity. I just think that the only way we come to ourselves is through each other. And there are so many people in the third world suffering so horribly right now, and we are so focused on ourselves and our culture that a lot of things are showing up in our culture that are making it impossible for us to focus on others. We're so self-focused.
AE: Right. I think if we showed them these people at the garbage dump that people in America would care.
MS: Yes, they would. Absolutely, they would. I don't think that people in America are really given enough information about the Third World. I remember Gandhi said something so profound about violence and non-violence. He said, "The greatest form of violence is poverty." And that's something we don't often think about. We think of violence as being conflict and fighting and wars and so forth, but the most ongoing horrific measure of violence is in the horrible poverty of the Third World… and the poverty in the United States as well. We have our own Third World here. And we have to first become aware of that and how to help and solve that.
You know, the Western culture projects the good life--security and comfort--as if that were a reality, you know. But I think that you also have to gauge how much happiness or joy, or how many contented people there are in the West. I mean we have the highest drug addiction. We have the highest divorce rate, the highest child abuse. We have the highest child pornography business going on in this country. We have so much juvenile delinquency, so much gun violence, so much family violence that these are all a projection of how confused and how self-involved we are. And it's hard for us to realize someone else's pain when we're so involved in our self-inflicted pain.
But once you experience Third World poverty, you're really changed forever, if you're at all open to it, because we're all united in our common humanity. And we are so made as to feel something for people who are in pain. It's not possible to be human and to be unaffected by what you see in the third world.
AE: And how did it change you personally seeing that poverty, that violence of poverty?
MS: The moment that I saw Payatas, I was overwhelmed emotionally, spiritually, and physically. As I mentioned, it was so hard to get beyond the stench of the place. And this particular garbage dump is much different than other garbage dumps in the third word because this one accepts everything.
And the scavengers, and that's what they're called, are like the untouchables of India in the Philippines. They're not considered on any social level whatsoever. They're just scavengers. Little children from barely toddler ages are in this horrible place, and when the garbage trucks come in, they go along a particular path, and they're followed by these children--these scavengers--who climb up on the trucks and throw garbage off that they think might be useful: plastics, any kinds of trinkets or anything to eat, anything useful.
And as you follow these children along, you realize they are walking in sludge, this horrific contaminated sludge that sometimes measures a foot deep and sometimes a few inches. And I began to realize the difference between this dump and other dumps that I had visited in third world. The difference is over the years, they had begun to introduce disposable diapers into the Third World, which is something entirely new. And this is in the last 15-20 years. And so those diapers are included in the trash, and they have contaminated this entire plot of land. All these acres of land are contaminated with human feces. And the smell is horrific.
And I thought to myself after the tour, I thought: My God, if I lived here, if I was confined to this hell what is the one thing that I might look forward to at the end of a day of scavenging through this mountain of hell? And I thought: Well, it might just be simply to take a bath. And so that's when I contacted Bill Keyes, and I asked him if we could build a bathhouse there.
AE: Initially it started with just some showers, and now it's really the heart of the center of the community. There are children playing there. And you got the pool and kids dancing and mothers congregating.
MS: Yeah. So it's become a community center, which is what we had hoped it would be. And it's very interesting because the people in the community came up with their own idea of how they wanted to run this place once it was built. And that was to make it a private club. It wasn't just open and free to the public. You had to buy a membership.
Now, mind you, a membership was like one peso a year, which is less than eight cents American. And the reason they did that was so that they would have a sense of ownership, hence, responsibility for the place and all the activity that went on there. And they were very wise in doing that because that way they maintained their dignity. The point is that they own it. They run it. It belongs to them. It is not a charitable thing
