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People and trash don't go together. And yet, in the city dump of Managua where they are inextricably attached, a bright hope abounds. This is a new two-part series produced by Aquafluence for Love Light & Melody.

I've just returned from an exhausting and wonderful trip to Nicaragua with my LL&M family, my second trip to visit my friends in the trash dump community over the past year. I can't wait to go back. But my body would beg to differ. A week of burning toxic fumes and I've been wrestled to my knees. My throat is raw, my head pounds, and my lungs scream for air. I'm surely on the mend (that's what the world-class doctor, high-dose prescription, and 24-hour pharmacy tell me)... but what of the beautiful families who live there every day? What keeps them smiling?

During my first trip, I wrote feverishly in my journal each day, wanting to preserve the intimate details and emotional turmoil:

"You turn the corner and are greeted with what seems like a backroad entrance to hell, or the extent of a volcano's debris strewn across the path of what surely was once a proper street. Smoke is everywhere. Trash and plastic is in every direction. And, unthinkably, people are here. My heart is still not ready to accept what my eyes see. All whelms up inside me, reducing me to silent tears."

I filled every inch of that journal, barely squeezing in the final reflections as my plane ascended into the clouds. And for seven months, my heart stayed there until I could return to it again. This time I was surrounded by family from around the world to celebrate Dia De Luz, a day of joy, color, music, and laughter. My buddy Brad explains:

Why would you go into a trash dump? Why would you bring people into a place where there's no life? There has to be one thing that lasts through all that stuff. It's what we have in us: it's light. When we love people just for the sake of love, light comes out of us."

If there's any way we should be living, this is it. From sunrise to sunset, we flew kites, we painted a mural, we helped collect recycling, we danced and sang... and we walked arm-in-arm with our precious brothers and sisters.

This time I've come away with something less tangible than a journal. While the soot in my lungs is quite real, I've left a part of my heart that's deeper under the surface and an unspoken love. A deafening silence and a peaceful chaos. Here I remain.