Garbage City

We are smack in the middle of a three day weekend and I took a few hours this afternoon to visit "Garbage City" with a few friends. The city of Cairo is rumored to have an, approximately, 80% recycling rate, which rivals any First World nation. This is all thanks to an ethnic and religious minority known as the Zabbaleen. They can be seen in the early morning hours on the streets of our neighborhood in Ma'adi pulling 2-wheeled carts loaded high with bags of garbage. We've spotted young boys flipping head first into the dumpster in front of our apartment building trying to collect the garbage on the bottom.



The garbage that is collected is then hauled out to a neighborhood, made up primarily of Coptic Christians, known as "Garbage City". Here the people live among the piles of trash, sorting it into sellable or unsellable. Often families will specialize in certain types of trash: plastics, metal, fabric etc. A recycling plant is located within the community and a variety of products, including handmade recycled paper, can be purchased. Their main source of income is the money they receive from selling raw materials back to be reused.





We couldn't get out of the car and walk around, so all of these photos were taken from the backseat.









The second part of our trip today took us to a Coptic Christian holy site located just beyond the gates of Garbage City. Here there are three churches carved into the cliffside. It was interesting to see the Bible verses and images carved into the rock face with both English and Arabic writing.







Here is a mosaic dome from one of the churches:



A carving inside one of the cave churches:



This was the first church we visited. Apparently the cave was discovered in the 1970's and was turned into a church at that time. There were signs in Arabic indicating a "women only" section:



At the top of the road through this area a stairway lead to this sad little playground that overlooked Cairo. The kids asked us our names and where we were from (in Arabic) and one little guy held out his hand and said, "Cash money, cash money" to which my one friend replied, in English, "No. That's not polite." I'm sure the message was received and internalized.



The steps leading to an amphitheater style church carved into the hill side:



Finally, I took this photo because it depicts a Biblical scene with a description in three languages: Hieroglyphics, English and Arabic.