The Belen Village

 
   
      Once you finally make your way through the small walkways and the large amounts of people in the small walkways, you come to a set of stairs that lead down into the district of Belen, or what is the village of Belen eight out of the twelve months. Most of these buildings are two story buildings with everything important on the second story. Every year from about March to June, the river at the edge of the village floods heavily, forcing many people to move up and away from the flooding river. Most years, people have been able to move upstairs and get around by boat, similar to Venice, but this year the water rose significantly higher than what they're used to. This left thousands of people homeless for months. Belen in one of the poorest regions in the world and this year's flood only added to the poverty. Once the water goes down, the city does a massive clean up to help restore the village for a few months, before the flooding starts again. However, the muck that is left after the flooding isn't just mud.
     The people of Belen dug trenches on the outskirts of the city and under their homes for the human and animal waste because indoor plumbing and running water is unheard of here. So when the river floods, the water picks up all of the trash and waste and then leaves it everywhere when it goes back down. So on top of mud and trash in the roads and the houses, there is also animal and human waste mixed in with it. When you walk through the village, the mud is everywhere. There are people using brooms, rakes, sticks, anything they can find to help clean up the streets and their houses. This clean up isn't anything like what you would see in the US. No national guard, no protective suits, and normally  no face masks. Most people are just wearing their everyday clothes, which consists of what Americans would call rags. Shorts with holes in them, most men not wearing t-shirts, and flip-flops or no shoes at all. These people walk around in waste-infected mud with absolutely no protective clothing. The worst part is the kids.
     Most of the kids are not wearing any clothes and they are playing in the waste, some even neck deep or rolling in it. All of them drink and bathe in the water that contains the human and animal waste. As you can imagine, all of the people are sick this time of years from all the diseases that come out of drinking the infected water. It's hard to imagine that people are even allowed to live like this without the Peruvian government interfering in some way. But this is completely normal and an accepted way of living. It's so crazy that this actually exists in the world. That people are okay with living in human waste. But if it's all they know, then I guess for them, it's better than not living at all. They don't know that those living conditions are unacceptable. Most of them seem to be genuinely happy that it's what they've been given and their trying to make the best of it.