Kenneth

Standing in the middle, with the blue shirt and the orange boots, Kenneth is inspecting the dump site before going to work. Cracking jokes with his friends, the positivity and energy are the first things I notice. As I wanted to work on the dump as well, I was looking for someone who could speak English. Kenneth took me with him for a day, teaching me the tricks of the work and telling me about his life story.

 

Kenneth was a medical student at one of the universities of Kumasi. In order for him to pay his and his little brother’s study fees, he worked at the dump site whenever he found the time. If you are willing to do the job, waste picking is actually a relatively lucrative business. But it is hard work. Whether it is fair that he needs to do such a job in order to pay for his study fees, is not a question for him. "There have to be differences. For the one it is day-time. For the other it is night-time." As if it is an inevitability of life, Kenneth understands that he needs to get his hands dirty for him to have a future.