Olney, Maryland Resident Journeys to India to Help Wastepickers

I am spending the summer in the slums of New Delhi. It's as far removed from the residential suburbs of my Olney, my hometown, as any place on Earth. Here families squat in bamboo huts surrounded by piles of stinking garbage. Flies swarm everywhere and on everyone. But the slum inhabitants are not forced to live with the garbage: they choose to. They are wastepickers, and the garbage represents their only source of income.