The children of the garbage fields in Phnom Penh

"The air was hot, thick and sickeningly sweet, with countless odors of decay. Smoke rose up from the putrid waste. Sameth, my Khmer stringer, and I stepped off the motorcycle, and sank several inches into foul mud. Garbage was piled stories high, covering the kilometers long dump site. People, the wretchedly poor, clad only in rags, swarmed over the heaps of refuse, like ants, searching out the saleable morsels, that would keep them alive, to pick trash another day.
"I told you they were poor," said Sameth, as if I hadn't believed him. And, in a way, I hadn't. We've all read about the desperate poor who comb the trash heaps of Sao Paolo and Rio. But somehow, the depth, the sheer magnitude of human suffering could only be appreciated when experienced first hand.
We had only been in the dump a few minutes, and I was already nauseous. Sameth was choking back bile. We would be leaving soon. But to the dwellers of the trash dump at Stung Mien Jai, this was their home. And, like prisoners on a life sentence, they would never be leaving. Trying to imagine what depths of poverty would drive human beings to such a desperate existence, it seemed ironic, that we were only 70 km from the posh hotels and foreigner hangouts of Phnom Penh. . . .
"Man holds in his mortal hands, the power to annihilate all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life." -- JFK
My words and my photos seemed a weak medicine against the virus of poverty. But it was all I had. I had to try."