One woman has collected daily household garbage to earn a living and raise her two children for decades. However, misfortune has not spared her.

Now, she has to house her grandchildren, even though her house is just three square meters in size.

Despite the difficulty of her own life, Huynh Nga, 48, has nourished a positive attitude and even helped others. She lives in a house on Nguyen Duy Duong Street, across from An Dong Market in District 5.

A working day

She is hired by a private company to collect garbage from households on streets and alleys in the District 5 and paid a thin salary because ‘anyone can do the job.’ Her work requires her to visit each house to collect garbage, throw it in her cart, and push it to rubbish treatment plants.

She diligently and silently performers her job day by day whether it is sunny or rainy.

“It is very hard to do this job on a rainy day because it is slushy. Rainwater makes the cart so heavy that I can barely push it.

“It’s better to do it on dry days,” Ms. Nga said, pushing her cart along a long alley that almost looks endless.

She admitted her life has been ‘bound’ to rubbish since she was very young.

Her father died of malaria when she was just 10 years old, and soon after that her mother passed away. She then began earning money from the pile of garbage near her house.

She worked all day on the garbage pile and slept on a mat nearby at night, she recalled, adding with a smile that her life is ‘the life of rubbish’.

“The only relative I had and knew then was my younger brother,” she said.

Even after growing up, getting married and having a son and a daughter, she still ‘attached’ her life to collecting garbage.

However, her husband abandoned her and their two children when he decided he couldn’t bear the hardship facing the family.

In 1982 she married another man who was also a paper collector but they split up after she fell in an accident. When she was eight months pregnant she lifted a concrete bench onto her cart, the effort of which displaced the baby in her womb.

“Neighbors helped and donated money to save her,” recalled Le Cao Tri, Nga’s neighbor.

She raised her two children alone and now has grandchildren, but misfortune continues to stalk her.

Eight years ago, her only brother became addicted to drugs and was infected with HIV.

Earlier this year her son, Dat, was arrested by local police for guarding an illegal casino in District 10.

“So she has to help take care of her grandchildren,” said Tang Minh, another neighbor. “She may never see an end to misery.”

Colleagues in her group of rubbish collectors often joke that they have never seen Nga act sad, instead she always talks and smiles with people around her.

A tiny house

Her house is only as wide as seven spans of an adult, with total area of no more than three square meters.

The piece of land is at the corner of a bigger lot that was left over when the larger area was made into a regular shape, so the owner gave the rest to her.

Over the years she collected discarded wires, wood, cement and iron sheets and arranged them on the leftover land to build her house.

The walls of her house are painted different colors ‘because they are the remainders of paint I have collected.’

“At night, I lie down here to sleep. My legs go on the shelf and the house fits my body,” she said while giving a tour of her home.

“Several foreign tourists have stopped in front of her house to watch and ask me how I can arrange things like this,” she said.

Her neighbors don’t call it a house, instead referring to it as a ‘bird cage’.

Despite the small area, she spares room for an altar by putting it on the top of a shelf in the center of her house.

She is confident that the house is not her best asset, as that is her kindness.

She said her ‘bird cage’ has never been torn down, not only because it is worthless, but also because it is an open space for others, including street children and motorbike taxi drivers, to rest.

Street children like visiting her house because she gives them toys she picks up while working.

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