Conversations with the Can Fairy

I woke up this morning before everyone else and quietly snuck out of the tent to go lay on the sand. As I lay there watching wind erosion in miniature, a woman came by with her two kids to collect our cans from the night before. I thanked her for picking up after us, which I guess threw her off since most people think of these can collectors as some sort of street scum.

She sent her kids off to look at another campsite, and I asked her how many cans were in a kilo. "Well, it depends," she said, "If there's a lot of the big tall cans or just little ones." She paused. "But I guess its about 60 to 70 cans in a kilo"

"And where do you sell them?"

"Oh, any scrap metal place will buy them... But it used to be a lot better you know. They used to pay 17, 18 pesos for a kilo, but now its just 9."

She left me wondering what her life must be like, and feeling angry that what she was doing was percieved by the public as a poor persons scavenging rather than a grassroots recycling program.

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