Every step crackles as Lena crosses the sea of plastic bottles.
She's never quite sure if the ground is giving way beneath her because she's squeezing air out of a bottle or because a swampy chemical pit is smoldering beneath it.
But Lena is tough.
There is no other way.
She is a garbage collector at the largest garbage dump in Kenya's capital, Nairobi.
200,000 people live in the Korogocho slum around the garbage dump;
Lena is one of thousands who make their living there.
She lives with her three children in a hut made of clay, sticks and some corrugated iron.
Her working day begins at six in the morning.
Theresa White
Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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Lena walks past a barracks at the side of her friend Rosalyn and puts on her uniform: a colorful scarf that she wraps around her intricately braided hair;
a knee-length ruffled dress, her skinny legs in jeans sticking out from underneath;
a bomber jacket, one size too big.
"So I don't get dirty." Lena pulled the stained clothes out of a small pile of rubbish.
The men grab the good stuff
The two women trudge through the pre-sorted bottles, over springy mounds of plastic scraps and down a path strewn with empty pill blisters.
Passing the spot where a truck brings fresh food waste from the hotels and airport.
Women don't go there.
They wouldn't survive.
The men grab the good stuff and defend their territory.
In the past, when Lena's husband was still there, he sometimes picked up rubbish from a fast-food restaurant.
Fried Chicken.
It's been a long time since Lena was able to offer her children something like this.
A few steps uphill and they are there.
"Our workplace," says Lena.
It's a waist-high hill on top of the Garbage Mountain.
She will work on it with Rosalyn for the next few hours.
Around her are dozens of others doing the same.
The hill consists of everything that gets thrown away in Nairobi.
Some of it is already so rotten that it almost looks like hummus, but there are also broken pieces, bags, cardboard and clothing in it.
The air smells sour, sometimes foul.
There are always clouds of smoke hanging over the mountains – chemicals in the rubbish ignite themselves. Lena bends down, her back straight, and pulls at the remains of the plastic bags.
Rosalyn picks through the trash.
Together they pull a sheet of glass out of the pile and set it aside so they don't hurt themselves.
Rosalyn still has a cut finger a few minutes later.
Lena connects it with a piece of cloth that she pulls out of the garbage.
They sort out paper, bottles and thin plastic foils because they are in demand by their buyers, the garbage dealers.
If they find something to eat in between, it goes into their mouths.
Breakfast begins this morning with a thin flatbread that Lena pulls out of the middle of a packet of moldy chapatis.
Afterwards, Rosalyn finds an orange, which she peels and breaks in half.
The women share everything with each other.