Zabaleen, Chapter 2

There are people who are aware of the plight of the residents of Zabaleen. There are European nuns who work among the children in the schools. I have read that Proctor and Gamble has a lot of programs there, they have a vested interest. The plastic containers of Proctor and Gamble products are often recovered by forgers who then fill them up with soap and resold as real Proctor and Gamble products. So Proctor and Gamble have set up shops where the locals can shred the plastic of these containers so they can't be reused by forgers. Kids learn to read by reading Proctor and Gamble containers. Every where we went kids asked us for money but we have been to places where they asked for pencils and another place where these 2 waiters, mere boys, asked for pens. I, always, carry a lot of pens and pencils for writing my stuff. I gave each a pen, they were so happy. They wore it proudly on their shirt pocket. Have you ever been to a place where a little means so much?

High above Cairo is the Citadel, where Saladin built this huge complex. Subsequent invaders of Egypt have expanded the place and behind the Citadel is Zabaleen, it is hidden away from the city. Above and beyond Zabaleen are the Moqattam hills and it is in these hills, a man from Poland, our taxi driver told us (we never found out his name) who built this massive complex for the people of Zabaleen. One only need to continue all the way through Zabaleen to get there. Here are places of recreation for the people of Zabaleen, there is a park, a few cave churches, recreation complex, picnic areas and space where the kids can play and the adults can congregate, worship and relax after the days' work and after they have cleaned up. The whole place has been excavated from the rocky hills and every where on the cliff surfaces are carved pictorial representations of Scripture. It is truly impressive and heartening to know that there are people who care.

This is the entrance to the main church who was carved out of the rocky cliffs, they moved 15 tons of rocks out to build this church and put in seats and an altar, it seats 5,000 people.

One cannot distinguish a Muslim from a Coptic Christian, they look alike, they're all Egyptians. The Coptic Christians claim to have a purer pedigree because they don't inter marry. They claim to be the direct descendants of the Pharaohs. The Muslims, because of intermarriage with the Arabs invaders, have their Pharaonic blood diluted. Every one speaks Arabic though in a Coptic Christian service, they sing in the Coptic language and use a Coptic liturgy. They are vital in keeping the Coptic language and heritage alive. This is supposed to be the language of the Pharaohs.

It was a very rushed 5 days in Cairo and as I write this, I have the luxury of time to reprocess what I've seen and experienced. It has truly been a heartening experience.

Zabaleen 'Garbage city' Cairo

I came to Cairo to see the real soul of Cairo. Before I embarked on this trip, I went on Gettyimages.com to check out pictures of Cairo. I didn't find any awe inspiring ones till I happened on some photographs of 'Zabaleen'. These were haunting images. I wrote in an earlier post about Zabaleen, saying that I hope I'll find someone in Cairo who would take me there. I thank God that I found a taxi driver, a Muslim, who has even heard about it. When we got into his taxi, he promised to take us where tourists would not dare venture. He suggested a tour of 'city of the dead' and 'garbage city'. When I asked if he meant Zabaleen, he was amazed that I even knew about it. Now we were both excited, he knew he found some willing clients and I knew this was what I was wishing for. He asked if we knew what the word meant. We said, no. 'Zabal' is a person who collects trash and 'Zabaleen' is a people who collect trash. These are the trash collectors of Cairo.

Even though the government has contracted the trash management of the city to some foreign companies, these companies can only handle a fraction of the city's trash. There are 20 million Cairenes living in a 20 km square of land. According to 'Cairo, city of sand', some 60 percent of the buildings in Cairo are illegal and probably have no services, since they really don't exist in city books. So the residents of Zabaleen, the men, comes door to door to pick up the trash everyday for a fee. The mornings are spent collecting trash which are then taken back to 'garbage city' where the women sort the trash on the ground floor of their homes. Zabaleen is a designated area where the trash is taken to and sorted, food waste is fed to the animals and recyclables are removed, sorted, packed and sold to recycling factories. When trash is dumped commercially, everything is compressed and nothing can be recovered from it. The people in Zabaleen makes an important contribution to recover the recyclables and therefore is a more Eco friendly process.

We drove through the area and took pictures from a moving cab. The people of Zabaleen don't like attention, to them it is a way of life. The place reeks of trash and this is how they live from cradle to grave. Our taxi driver told us, 'only the Christians do this, we, Muslims need to be very clean, we pray 5 times a day and cleans before praying'. Indeed these are Coptic Christians, displaced from the South who has come to Cairo looking for work and this was the only viable alternative. Our taxi driver also said, 'no Muslim women would have trash in their homes'. Indeed the trash is sorted out by the women and the children. He snickered and did not realise that we are Christians ourselves and that was why we were interested, I was interested in the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt.

Jobs are scarce and the wages are menial. Our taxi driver said, he was an accountant but couldn't find work that pays a living wage. So a lot of people have turned to driving taxis in Cairo, it pays more, especially if one speaks some foreign language, they can drive tourists around the various sights and neighborhoods of Cairo. There is a lot of taxis in Cairo but even then it is not enough for the population. Cairo streets are choked with cars, taxis, mini vans, private cars, there is no order, they honk all the time. It is one big cacophony of traffic. It takes a little getting used to. The disproportionate distribution of jobs, wealth and any opportunities is so wide in Cairo. Life is hard in Cairo except for the very rich and the expatriate population. For us it was wonderful, our US dollar went really far. This is the first time our money got us more.

We saw trucks coming back, piled high with bags and bags of trash. There are shops doing a brisk business selling big plastic bags to hold the recyclables. The place reeks of rotting food and other trash. Here and there, a few donkeys and some sheep were feeding on some food waste. I was told they raise pigs here and these are sold to establishments that cater to the foreign population that do eat pork. Our taxi driver pointed out,'look, look, that christian woman is spreading out the trash in her own home.' Indeed she was. We saw young and old, men and women, adults and children all getting into the work. We passed a butcher shop, ' they sell pork here!' our driver was quick to point out.

This is a regular neighborhood, there are pastry shops, bakeries, pharmacies, tea shops, schools, homes and everything else. Our taxi driver was about now driving at a break neck speed through the narrow and filthy streets. We had to stop because just then a truck was blocking the narrow one way lane, it was piled high with trash, they have just returned from the city. I was able to take a picture with the taxi not moving. Next to me was this donkey eating some of the food waste of Cairo. Our taxi driver was quick to say again, 'look, look, at all the trash they're bringing back!' Then he sped off again, laughed gleefully,' we are leaving garbage city!'

I thank God that I had the opportunity to witness the lives of people in Zabaleen, Cairo. I really didn't go to Cairo just to see the Giza pyramids. I came also to see the struggles of the Coptic Christians, being a christian myself. I came to see the paradox of the past glory of an ancient people and the struggles of their modern descendants. Throughout our five days in Cairo we saw abject poverty, not just in the outskirts but right in Cairo. We saw poverty that to us was strange in a country that had such a glorious past, they were such an advance civilization in the days of the Pharaohs. We see their glory in the funerary and their cemeteries. Is it because these are a people more engaged in the after life than the present life? I don't think so. Truly there should be a more equitable distribution of opportunities.

Zabaleen is not in any guide book. I only happened upon it while viewing pictures on Gettyimages. I told our taxi driver that I'll write a guide to Cairo and put Zabaleen in it.

A pharmacy in Zabaleen, above pictures show a bakery and a pastry shop.

A sundry shop.

A tea shop where people hang out, drink tea and smoke the water pipe.

It is not only doom and gloom in Zabaleen. In the next post I will write about the people or the benefactors of Zabaleen, how they work to make life in Zabaleen more bearable. There are lots of admirable people in this world and also in Zabaleen.

I'll never look at trash the same again. While traveling, I have gained insights that has forever changed me.

It's good to be home

I went to my Sunday farmer's market and it brought back memories of markets I saw in Cairo. It is so good to be back and to familiar surroundings, it was so good to see the usual vendors at the market and I am glad I live in the USA. I took a walk around my neighborhood. While the rest of Los Angeles is sizzling because of the heat wave, it was so beautiful where I live, the sea breeze brought the temperature down and the sun was bright, the air was clear. I can breathe again and leave my guard down. It was on heighten alert in Cairo. We were on transit in London for three hours, the first thing we did was eat in a western restaurant, we ate at Gordon Ramsey's Plane food restaurant. We had pork and green salad, two thing we didn't have in Cairo. We were told not to eat salads in Cairo and only drink bottled water. It was good to order a fizzy Badoit, all the bottled water in Cairo is still water.

There's no shortage of food in Cairo, nor of fresh fruits and vegetables and meat, though they are expensive. They grow all their own food, the desert oasis yields and abundance of fresh food. We saw bananas, tomatoes, strawberries, all kinds of root vegetables, dates, of course. There were butcher shops at every corner. We don't know how they were grown so the guide books warned that unless you can peel your fruit, don't eat it.

These are different farmers' markets, so exotic, so picturesque. I shall always remember them. Some of the neighborhoods are so different that they are almost scary. We went to so many, each time wondering if we'll come out alive, but they left us alone and we came home.

I don't think the tour buses brings tourists to these areas. We hired a taxi for the whole day or part of the day, telling the driver where to take us and to wait for us, so if we should feel uncomfortable, we can jump back into the taxi and be off. Oftentimes we don't stop but just ask the driver to slow down so we can take pictures from the moving cab. There's a lot of haggling and baksheesh (bribes), after the first day, we got the hang of it and became pretty good. I will post more survival tips in later postings.

Mmmmmmmm.... fresh salads, how I miss it. It's good to be home.

Cairo, city of sand

Outside Cairo museum, no photographs allowed inside, so we don't have any shots of the inside exhibits. They were truly impressive. Seeing them in real life certainly has placed a certain meaning to them. The time of the Pharaohs was truly remarkable, their engineering feats and their lives revealed a truly impressive civilization. One would think, or maybe it is just me, that one would want to emulate and continue that greatness. What does one do for an encore, nothing? Life in Cairo is closely associated with the river, Nile though the city is fast expanding further away from it. There's sand, sand and more sand everywhere. There's always a layer of sand on the streets and they say, once in a while, there will be a huge sand storm that blankets the city. My face is always covered with a layer of sand and sometimes I can feel the grit of sand in my mouth.

The guy in the red wants to polish my dusty shoes. I took a picture of my dusty shoes and I gave him the thumbs up, meaning I love the dust on my shoes. He motioned back, with a polishing motion, take a picture and thumbs up, meaning it is even better taking a picture of my shoes after he's polished them.

My dusty shoes are now in my closet, dust and all. Maybe over the next few days when I don't feel so sentimental, I'll polish them.

This was taken in Giza, even though it is the desert, it is one hub of activity. There are tour buses, people from all the world, there are camels, there are horses. Even though there are various places where the pyramids are, they are in the same desert. One can opt to ride horses or camels to visit Giza and from Giza, go to Saqqara in the south. From certain areas in Cairo, one can see the Giza pyramids, it is surreal.

These are potted succulents and they are covered with sand.

I picked up an incredible book by Maria Golia called Cairo, city of sand. A description of the book, ' Cairo is a 1400 year old metropolis whose streets are inscribed with sagas, a place where the pressures of life test people's equanimity to the limit. Virtually surrounded by desert, sixteen million Cairenes cling to the Nile and each other, proximities that color and shape lives. Apart from a brisk historical overview, this book focuses on the present moment of one of the world's most illustrious and irreducible cities. ....'

Five days in Cairo

We were having breakfast in our hotel's terrace at 6.30 am Cairo time when my brother, Edward, called from Los Angeles saying that he'll pick us up at LAX in 20 hours' time. Sophie and I looked at each other, we then realised we'll be traveling 20 hours in order to get home. So last night, 20 hours later we landed at LAX and in half an hour I was home. It's wonderful to be home. Oscar Wilde said, ' two things I like about travel, one is leaving home and the other is coming home'. That's exactly what it is I like about travel, it was wonderful to leave, even for just one week and it was wonderful to come home. Cairo was exhausting because it is so different. Life is such a struggle, my expectations were so different, one would expect an ancient civilization to continue it's greatness. But as all with ancient civilizations that has come and gone, their greatness never continue, their greatness becomes the cemetery, we came to Egypt to see their greatness in burial places ie the pyramids and the gorgeous mausoleums of the Mamluks. It is a great culture shock for us and I'm still trying to get over this. As I uploaded my pictures (I took almost 2000 pictures) and looking at them again brought back that sense of unease as I see again the struggles and the abject poverty of life in Cairo. The wonderful thing about modern digital photography is we didn't have to bring loads of film. I have 2 memory cards of 8 gb each and they hold lots of images. I have 2 battery packs and can use up the power of each one in a day of shooting. We recharge every night when we come back to the hotel. Over the next few months I will post more pictures and write more about our experiences there. Will we go back? Most definitely, there's still so many layers to Cairo we haven't excavated and then there is upper Egypt (south) that we still need to visit. I'm glad I didn't go alone, a single women would be the object of harassment and even with the two of us, 2 Western women, we can sense the hostility in some areas. Most people go to Egypt as part of a tour, probably this is the wisest thing to do and they away with wonderful stories and pictures of the Giza pyramids among other thing. For me, I wanted to see and experience the real soul of Egypt, life and things that the tour operators don't show you. For that we were very successful as you will see in future postings. It is hard to say in one sentence our impressions. I'm still reeling from culture shock. What we saw was so real, it wasn't fun!

From our hotel in the Zamalek area, this is where the expatriates live and it is very insulated from the rest of Cairo. This is a good introduction to Cairo, if we stayed in the heart of downtown we probably would have wanted to leave sooner. It is hard. I chose to only stay a week because I know it wouldn't be easy. There weren't much in the form of amenities for Westerners, there's a few restaurants that were Ok and there's an English bookstore, a small one, where we spent a lot of our evenings, drinking tea and buying books on Egypt.

The Nile, taken from Corniche de Nil, these are some High rise buildings in the Zamalek area.

We did the touristy stuff, rode a horse and cart that took us around the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx.

A special interest of mine was to see Coptic Christian life, I saw a lot of it, in 'Garbage city', in the Coptic Cairo and in the monasteries of Wadi Natrun.

This is considered a better part of Islamic Cairo, there are others that are appalling.

We loved the displays of spices, to us, as with the pyramids, it represents the quintessence of Cairo, the Spice markets.

They use a lot of palm fronds for building little shelters.

A typical view of rooftops, the ramshackle buildings, most of it have collapsed, the satellite dish for TV. When an Egyptian girl wants to marry, one of the requirement the groom must provide is cable TV.

The skyline of Cairo is dotted by minarets everywhere, every corner you peer into would reveal mosque and a minaret. The call to pray is heard echoing all over Cairo 5 times a day. It is quite beautiful, really.

Street food, 'kushari' costs about 5 Egyptian pounds (less than a dollar), it is good and filling. We loved Egyptian food.

I'm exhausted right now.... the jet lag is not so bad this trip.