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Larry, a skinny eight-year-old boy, struggles to drag a bag bigger than himself, stuffed with bits of metal that caught his eye.
Dressed in tattered clothes and rubber boots, dozens of children like him live and excavate in the Mindoube dump on the outskirts of Libreville, the oil-rich capital of Gabon.
Makeshift dwellings made of tin and recycled materials were built on the landfill, a mountain several tens of meters high and hundreds of meters long.
Every day, dump trucks unload around 800 tonnes of waste. Diggers brew trash in a constant hubbub of heavy machinery as a stench, fueled by the sweltering tropical heat, emerges from the debris.
The rescuers’ camp in Mindoube. By Steeve Jordan (AFP) In the midst of this, children wander around looking for metals, especially copper, which they can sell for 2,000 CFA francs (about $ 3.5 / three euros) per kilo (2.2 pounds).
Acrid smoke pervades the neighborhood as scavengers burn electronic items, such as televisions or computers, to remove copper items inside.
“I work there 15 hours a day,” says Larry, who has been coming to Mindoube for several months.
“I don’t go to school anymore. I have no choice,” he said, his gaze fixed on the mounds of garbage. “I earn a few thousand francs every day.
“Children who die”
At this point, a boy throws an empty paint can under the wheels of a dump truck, wanting to flatten it as the vehicle backs up.
The boy, in a T-shirt much too big for his frail body, is only inches away from being crushed by his tires.
“Back off, don’t get so close!” Shouted Grace Ongo-Mbou, president of the Gabonese civil rights association Les Guerriers du Social.
His NGO is campaigning to educate children who work at the landfill, urging them to go to school and organizing sporting events.
“The state must ban child labor in landfills,” Ongo-Mbou said.
“You can find five-year-olds here, there are children who also die, run over by trucks, hurt themselves. It kills me to see children snooping around in the garbage.”
Gabon, a small Central African country of two million souls, is one of the continent’s largest oil producers and one of the richest per capita in the region.
Yet, according to the World Bank, a third of the Gabonese population lived below the poverty line in 2017.
The situation has since worsened, with the Covid-19 pandemic severely slowing the economy.
“We have seen more and more children coming to the landfill to work over the past year,” said Roselin Bendome, who also works with Les Guerriers du Social.
“The state must take care of them.
Risk for the health
Scavengers are exposed to many health hazards, from rashes to respiratory illnesses.
“I am worried about my health but we have to do it,” said Ekomi, 12, who has been coming to the landfill for two weeks.
In addition to the health risks posed by the acrid air and intense heat, young scavengers in Mindoube also die or are mutilated by falling under vehicles working at the dump, according to civil rights activists. By Steeve Jordan (AFP) Daniel, 17, is walking around shirtless, revealing a huge scar on his chest, which he says was caused by a metal bar.
He said he came “to earn some money and help the family.”
The tough teenager says he can earn some 15,000 CFA francs (about 23 euros) a day. He lives alone in a small hut made of wooden pallets, keeping his clothes in a discarded cooler.
“It’s our livelihood, our daily life,” says Crépin, a 20-year-old who has been excavating the landfill for five years. He was carrying a copper bag and wore a t-shirt over his head to protect himself from the sun.
Crépin and others like him see no other option to survive than to work in the mountain of scrap metal, in a country with a 20% unemployment rate in 2020, according to the World Bank.
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