PORT CHARLOTTE — They walked on the well-worn paths that took them up the mountain of garbage, past empty bottles and tires and plastic bags. They saw sheets of metal and pieces of wood standing together in what looked to be a hut, certainly too small to house an individual, yet it housed a family of six.
Or more.
They saw children playing in this world of trash, their feet bare or maybe wearing one sandal with a broken strap, their faces dirty with the soot that coats the mountain of garbage known as Smokey Mountain that rises more than 100 feet in the worst slum in Manila, the capital of the Philippines.