Life in a garbage dump

Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world. The average monthly income in the Southeast Asian country is less than 32 dollars. In this picture, Soburn collects fodder for pigs from the Anlong Pi landfill. The 11-year-old works in the morning and goes to school in the afternoon.

As soon as a garbage truck dumps the rubbish in the landfill, people immediately start looking for leftover food and other useful items. These people live and work in this landfill, which is as large as eleven football fields.

The town of Siem Reap has about 140,000 inhabitants and an international airport, but no waste disposal mechanism. The entire year, the household waste is deposited in the Anlong Pi rubbish dump. In this picture, the young waste-collectors take a break from work in the shadow while they wait for the next truck to dispose of garbage.

Anlong Pi is 240 kilometers from the capital Phnom Penh, and close to one of Cambodia's main tourist attractions, the temple complex at Angkor Wat. Every year, several million tourists visit the town. Some of them also visit the rubbish dump. Thirteen-year-old Seu charges money from tourists who take his photographs and earns 20 cents a day.

Many children who live in this garbage dump do not go to school. For them, it's a matter of day-to-day survival, and their best chance at it is to find food items from the trash.

In the evenings, when the temperature in the city cools down, the search continues with flashlights.

The landfill residents catch stray animals and roast them at night, which provides them with much-needed energy to work again the next morning.