SIDON, Lebanon: Among the pile of rotten produce, Abu Omar searched for the best preserved vegetables. “We survive on this trash, it’s where we find food,” he said, as he picked fruit off a pile thrown in the square next to Sidon’s Souk al-Khoudra (vegetable market).
The vegetables and fruits were discarded by grocers mostly because they were rotten and unsuitable for regular consumers.
But for those in need, the souk’s trash is a blessing.
Dozens of poor gathered in the huge square near the souk known as al-Hasba at Sidon’s southern entrance to collect cardboard boxes and produce thrown away by merchants near the souk.
“There’s isn’t anything wrong with this,” Abu Omar said. “But begging, that’s shameful.”
Abu Omar, in his 50s, is a Palestinian residing in Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon’s largest refugee camp. He leaves the camp early on a daily basis on a mission to find food for his family of seven.
He explained how his search entailed finding vegetables and fruit that is not completely rotten and removing the decaying parts to ensure a daily meal.
“Poverty and destitution have no identity, there’s no difference between a poor Lebanese, Palestinian or Syrian,” said Abu Omar, who does not pay attention to the passersby watching him as he rummages through the pile.
He considers his daily toil a kind of occupation.
With a daily income of around LL15,000, Abu Omar said it was difficult to make ends meet, especially with the tough economic conditions in the country.
The same was true for Abu Ahmad, who initially refused to talk about his ordeal to The Daily Star.
Abu Ahmad, a Lebanese national, was laid off from his job at a factory when it shut down due to difficult economic conditions.
He tried working in agriculture, but it was too demanding for him.
“I spent all the money I got as compensation after I was laid off,” he said. “It dissolved like salt in water, and I failed to provide a living for myself.”
Abu Ahmad visits Souk al-Khoudra every day. Among his family of four, only his wife knows where the food in the house is coming from.
“I search among the vegetables and fruits for edible pieces, I clean and wash them,” he said.
He explained that in the souk he finds everything he needs to feed his children. But keeping them from finding out that it comes from the trash was a tough task, he said.
“I’m not exaggerating when I tell you I clean the carrot piece to make it look as if it was harvested from the ground,” he said.
Abu Ahmad, who used to collect waste and scrap from the Sidon dump before it was closed, has been receiving help from relatives and customers at Souk al-Khoudra.
“If we had a government then we wouldn’t be forced to eat and survive off of trash,” he said.
Abu Ahmad described poverty as a slow death, adding that he felt in Lebanon the lives of citizens were considered unworthy.
Farah, a Palestinian woman from Syria, echoed Abu Ahmad’s sentiments. Having fled the Sabinah refugee camp in Syria due to the conflict there, she is now living in Ain al-Hilweh.
“Imagine receiving LL240,000 each month from UNRWA,” Farah said. “We are a family of three, do we have to eat air to be satiated?”
“I call this edible trash for humans, for people like us,” she said, making her way to a dumpster.
Zahia, who was busy cutting broccoli, left her children in the area to collect cardboard boxes.
“I sell a single box for LL100; this means that I make a LL1,000 out of each 10 boxes I sell,” she said. “This is less than a $1.”
Workers who clean the souk twice per day explained that there were people who came to the produce market’s trash heap in the late afternoon as well. They told the Daily Star that many of them come on their motorcycles after they finish their day jobs to collect whatever they can to survive because they have only meager incomes.
“Life is hard,” a worker said, describing those like Farah and Abu Ahmad, as he watched them pick through the mound of trash. At the end of each day, a bulldozer comes to collect and dispose of the waste in a treatment plant.
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