Orphan boy lives in Garabage dum

April 11, CNN
Orphan boy lives in garbage dump – Dan Rivers

He doesn't know how old he is, but he thinks he's 7. His name is Khin Zaw
Lin. He's lived in a garbage dump virtually his entire life.

I find Lin walking in a festering landscape of rotting food, plastic bags
and junk at the Mae Sot garbage dump in Thailand near the Thai-Myanmar
border. His parents are long gone. His home is a makeshift shelter made
from salvaged bags, cloth and wood.

Lin is one of about 300 refugees in the dump who survive on other people's
trash. Many are children. Some are women with babies.

Their daily routine follows the same pattern: They mill about the dump,
waiting for the next truck to arrive, hoping for enough discarded food to
get them through the day.

Lin pokes through the rubbish with a machete. He says he collects bottles
and plastic for three cents a sack. He shows me his feet, which were
filthy and ribbed with cuts.

He tells me through an interpreter that he can't afford shoes. He walks
barefoot through the treacherous landscape.

My assistant told me about Lin's home while he was researching another
story on the border area in Myanmar, the country once known as Burma. I
found it hard to believe at first, but I was curious. I persuaded my
camera crew to make the six-hour drive from Bangkok.

When we arrive at the dump, people are afraid of us. We'd been told there
are orphans living at the dump, but people are wary. They think we are
there to take away the orphans or ask for bribes.

I tell them I want to help, and I am eventually directed to Lin. He greets
me with a soft, hoarse voice. But he's all energy and purpose when he
resumes plucking bottles from the mountain of trash.

A recycling firm offers the closest thing to steady employment for Lin and
his family. It buys what bottles and plastics Lin and others salvage.

Lin gives the money to his adopted mother, Tabblo. She tells me that Lin's
biological mother gave him to her in Myanmar when he was a baby because
she couldn't cope with the responsibility.

Life under the military junta in Myanmar can be brutal. The country's
economy is collapsing, and torture and rape under the country's military
regime is commonplace. Lin's new mother decided to flee to Thailand in
search of a better life. She found a garbage dump instead.

Still, Tabblo says scavenging for food in the dump is actually an
improvement on her previous life.

As I listen to Lin's story, a question keeps going through my mind: How
can a 7-year-old spend his entire childhood in this squalor?

Perhaps it's because Lin is invisible -- he doesn't have a passport or
papers. He is part of special group of refugees from Myanmar that don't
officially exist.

The United Nations established refugee camps in Thailand for those who
flee Myanmar, but the camps are reserved only for victims of political
persecution. Refugees like Tabblo fear if they enter a refugee camp,
they'll be classified as migrant workers and deported.

As a result, these refugees are trapped in the garbage dump -- not enough
money to go elsewhere and no prospects back home.

I thought I had become accustomed to the grinding poverty I had
encountered in parts of Asia. I've met my fair share of children who are
denied the luxury of hope. But Lin's story angers me. I feel close to
losing all objectivity.

Near the end of my meeting with Lin, I ask his adopted mother if she, and
Lin, would ever escape the rubbish dump.

Her answer is as hard as the world she and Lin inhabit.