In these blogs I have been using the name Smokey Mountain to describe the place where I live and work. But why this name?
Smokey Mountain in Manila should not be confused with the Smoky Mountains in the southeastern part of the States, which were probably named thus because of the beautiful mist prevalent in those mountains. There is nothing beautiful about Smokey Mountain because this name comes not from mist but from actual smoke. The garbage including plastics, rubber and, burns almost constantly day and night. You can imagine poisons such as dioxin which are contained in this smoke.
And it is a mountain – a mountain of garbage. For forty years Smokey Mountain was the garbage dump for most of Metro-Manila. The household garbage of around ten million people was dumped on the island of Balut in the northernmost part of the delta of Manila. At its largest Smokey Mountain covered twenty hectares (around forty football fields) and reached thirty meters in height. This smoldering dump was not only an eyesore but also an ecological disaster so it was finally closed in 1995. However, during the hot dry season it still continues to belch forth acrid poisonous smoke due to spontaneous combustion of the methane gas trapped inside below the surface.
Before 1995 about twenty thousand people lived on and around this mountain of garbage. We call them scavengers because they made their 
living by looking for saleable and recyclable trash. They still support their families by going out into the streets or into the new garbage dump and scavenging. The government removed about half of the mountain and built low-income tenements for these scavengers who comprise about half of our parishioners. Our church and rectory are built in plain site of the remaining half of the mountain.
The aerial view of Smokey Mountain is a pre-1995 picture taken by Mr. Georg Gerster of PPS Correspondence and printed in a social studies textbook of Teikyo Shoin Publications of Tokyo. In it you can clearly see the smoke coming from the mountain of garbage and the homes clustered 
around it.
The second picture shows the tenement buildings built right next to the remaining part of the mountain. We moved into these buildings in 2004 after nine years in temporary housing.
The third shows two youth walking through the new garbage dump which we call Smokey Mountain Number Two. In 2003 the whole mountain suddenly exploded and burned like this for over two weeks.