Heavy Metal Lifestyle

Its noon, 35 degrees Celsius in the middle of a field, Jano and his son are working, stuffing the rusted skeletons of two cars with metal wire, cables, steel plates, refrigerator and cooker parts: basically anything made from metal. Their day consists of metal and their survival depends on finding, transporting and selling it. Jano is stripped to the waist talking philosophically, making graceful gestures. Around two metres tall strong in arm and body with deep set eyes. He cracks a surprisingly warm smile as he talks of the how much the city has changed and how never drinking alcohol has kept him clear and strong. His eighteen-year old son stands astride old car tyres folding strips of rusted metal and stuffing them into the burnt out skeleton of an old car. He works without words, complaint or pause appearing to take no notice of me or the intense heat.

Wreckage is strewn over a half-mile radius. Of the many dead and dying autos an old Trabant filled with hay is home to a family of rabbits, I’m not sure if they are pets or food. A makeshift curtain pulled across the open end of a cab-less bus makes do as home and Janos’ wife prepares lunch at an improvised outdoor kitchen. A small white dog watches me carefully.

His mornings are spent sifting through junk and construction site debris usually collected the day before. Freeing metal rebar and reinforcement from old concrete with a sledge hammer. In the afternoon he rides his bicycle and trailer five miles into the city to scour the streets and numerous construction sites for scrap metal.
Bratislava is a city riding a wave of reconstruction as old buildings are being torn down weekly to be replaced by shopping parks and business centres. A full bicycle trailer of scrap metal will buy Jano and his family enough food for two days. But although he’s a man carving out his daily existence from scrap metal he seems both at peace and content with his world and how many of us can say that?
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