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A stinking garbage dump near the West Bank city of Hebron is workplace and home to dozens of men and boys

Among the gentle slopes of cypress-covered hills near the West Bank
city of Hebron is an anomaly, a stinking garbage dump that is workplace
and home to dozens of men and boys. The quiet that hangs over
neighbouring olive groves, in the far south of the West Bank, is broken
here by the shouts of workers, many of them children, and the grinding
of a bulldozer covering the picked-over trash with sand and dirt.

Overhead the sky is clear and the sun beats down, heating up the
detritus of modern life — vegetable scraps, washing liquid bottles, old
clothes, cans with dregs of soda in them. The smell produced is
overpowering at times, a sickly-sweet stench of rotting organic matter
and chemical effluvia, which sticks to clothes and hair despite the
light breezes that sweep over the hilltop. At the far end of the hill,
created entirely from layers of garbage ploughed over with sand, are
makeshift residences — planks of wood with tarpaulin or rubbish bags
strapped over them to provide shelter.

For many of those working here, these shacks act as their home
during the week, a place they can sleep at night rather than going back
to the village of Yatta. And it also means they are on hand to sort out
any rubbish that comes in after dark. It is unpleasant, tiring ... >>>