"That garbage pile is actually kind of famous – every so often, a chunk of it falls over and kills a few people. All the people you saw on it actually live there; they dig through all the stuff trying to find things they can sell for food or clothing or anything else they need."

"But it's garbage!"

"So? Haven't you ever thrown away something that was still good, just because you didn't want it any more? We recycle aluminum at home, but here, it's not so important – so there's plenty of aluminum cans and other stuff for them to dig out and sell. It's not fun, but for most of them, it's do that or starve. I know which one I'd prefer."

I went on to tell her "And that bunch of shacks we saw is a poor neighborhood, is all. The woman you saw probably was peeing behind a bush; damn few of those places have running water inside, never mind actual toilets. But even the people in those shacks are better off than the ones at the dump, aren't they?"

She looked at me as though she couldn't believe I was saying all of that as matter-of-factly as I was.

I told her "Kelly, I'll tell you again: this is a poor country. Up until the end of World War II, the Philippines was a U.S. possession that we got when we won the Spanish-American war. After that war, the U.S. government really screwed them over when they started fussing that they wanted to be their own country. Try reading up on the Philippine 'Insurrection' sometime. We didn't get around to 'giving' them their independence until after World War II. For the last couple hundred years, they've always been under someone else's control; it's taking them a while to figure out how to do stuff on their own. Shucks, our country had a tough time getting going after we got our independence from England."

She looked at me doubtfully, and I went on "It's true, Kelly.