Garbage City

Recently, I met Hanna Fathy Rostom, a lifelong resident of Manshiyet Nasr on Mokattam in Cairo, for a tour of his neighborhood. Mokattam is a small mountain in Cairo; its sand colored rock rises to a sharp ridge above the city west of the Citadel, just outside the walls of Islamic Cairo and near the City of the Dead. The term “Garbage City” is used in English to describe the part of Mokattam where the zabaleen have lived for about 50 years; literally the Arabic term “Hay al-Zabaleen” means “The Garbage Collector’s Area”.

For a few generations the zabaleen have been collecting and sorting massive amounts of Cairo’s trash. Their operations successfully reuse and recycle approximately 90% of the waste they process. On our tour, we witnessed plastic melting and blocks of aluminum being produced from cans. Every so often, a truck or donkey cart passes by, piled precariously high with trash and recyclables, teetering up the hill to facilities where the collections will be sorted, cleaned and processed for another use.

The zabaleen are Coptic Christians, although there is also a Muslim section of Manshiyet Nasr that participates in recycling. Coptic Christians are a large minority in Cairo, perhaps making up 10% of the city’s population. They are also the victims of an institutionalized racism that pervades many sectors of the system.

The most profitable part of the zabaleen business, until recently, was the slaughter and sale of pigs raised on organic waste. Essentially, recycling was a side business. The system collapsed last year, when swine flu made its first appearance in Egypt and the state ordered all 300,000 pigs in the country slaughtered. Now some of the trash sorting business has fallen by the wayside, as it is no longer quite as profitable. Organic waste piles up in Hay Al-Zabaleen as well as in many parts of Cairo, adorning the city with sprawling, garish piles exuding putrid stenches. Over tea and rolls in Hanna’s living room, we joke that the omnipresent Cairene cats are now gourmets, taking their pick from lengthy menus of meats and cheeses.

According to our guide, the slaughter of the pigs was not the first state action that directly assaulted the survival of the zabaleen. Their presence in the city has ever been an unwanted one, and Hanna testifies to the hardships of growing up in an area with no infrastructure. He described days spent standing in long lines to receive water from the one pump in the area. He described a makeshift home with a low roof and no electricity. He told of the superabundance of rats in the neighborhood: “When you looked out the window at night, you could see the whole street moving.”

Hanna also has people to thank: a Christian nun from Europe who opened a private school in the area, which he attended and which, if he is evidence, offered a solid education. Hanna is devoted to his community and to leading a more sustainable life. On his roof he has built solar panels that heat his family’s water. Throughout the area, he has also built another 30 sets of solar panels on the roofs of other homes. He also produces his own methane cooking gas through what he affectionately describes as a “cow”: inside the thick plastic tub, the bacteria from cow dung reacts with the organic waste he feeds it daily. Through a plastic tube, the cow farts into his kitchen, providing the majority of the gas he and his wife use for cooking and washing clothes. The couple also runs a charity that helps young women in the neighborhood make the purchases they need for marriage, and assists widows with living expenses. As with most traditional neighborhoods in Cairo, the people act as one large family, and as we walk around Hanna is greeted as son, brother, and uncle, and the tour group as esteemed visitors. Alongside the poverty, the piles of trash, the dead rats littering the street and the rancid smell, there is a permeating warmth and love.

As part of our tour, we visit one of several community organizations in the area. The Association for the Protection of the Environment teaches area women crafts and promotes composting. Friendly, jocular women are at work in a calm, clean environment that starkly juxtaposes the streets of Garbage City. Some are producing handmade paper embedded with flower petals, reusing old paper & fabrics. Others craft the paper into pretty cards and other stationery products sold onsite and in shops throughout Cairo. On the second floor, women quilt and weave bags and rugs. Some of the products are exported to the United States for sale through the Ten Thousand Villages project. One of the organization’s programs teaches women to weave on looms; when they complete the course, they are given a loom to work with in their homes, and a system through which to distribute their products.

We walk up the hill, away from the non-profit, through more recycling operations, muddy roads, past exhausted donkeys and through a gate and into a street lined with cliffs into which are carved religious icons and Biblical passages. Rising above us is the largest church in the Arab World. Built in 1990, directly into the side of the mountain, the church is enormous, airy, seamlessly incorporated into the natural environment. Hanna recounts some fantastical Coptic myths regarding the space. After removing our shoes, we enter a small underground cavern where a Coptic prayer is taking place. I cover my head with my scarf as I listen to the chanting and inhale the sweet smoke that fills the room. As the priests make offerings at the altar, Hanna talks about how the Egyptian state once claimed possession of the cavern, but a scholar used the burns on the roof of the room to prove that it had been used for centuries as a Coptic ceremonial space. As we exit, we talk about parallels in gender separation in Coptic and Muslim traditions.

We complete our tour at the Cafeteria, a half-completed structure that we climb to get a bird’s eye view of Hay Al-Zabaleen. In the midst of utilitarian brick structures, we point out to each other pretty painted windows, a roof covered in goats, a cow lounging on her rope. We take photos of each other and thank Hanna for the beautiful tour. Downstairs, we drink apple soda and eat crisps; it is Lent and the Cafeteria serves nothing produced from animal products. Hanna helps our group get a taxi off the mountain. As we part, I tell him I’ll send others to receive his warm and illuminating tour. Email him at cghannaschaap at hotmail dot com.

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~ by amiraha on 3 April 2010.