Garbage City...and the Church of the Caves

Dana and me in the Church of the Caves


....and Garbage City.













Cairo is a city of  20 million people....and they of course generate a lot of garbage. Much of it you see on the street....but I find now there's a reason for that. Historically there have been  a class of people called the ``Zebaline``.....living in the city whose sole purpose in life has been to act as garbage collectors....if you leave it outiside your door and the dogs and cats don`t tear into first...the Zebaline come by and pick it up. This is all done free of charge...,you don't have to pay nor does the city...the Zebaline then take this garbage back to the place where they live....you guessed it..."Garbage City".
But there is an issue..the new post revolution Muslim Brotherhood government...sold the rights to pick-up the garbage to a Brazilian firm...who in turn hire the lowest of the low in this society...to go around and pick up garbage and sweep the streets....problem is these people have very little skill and a no real   reason to work for the miserable pay they get....so they DON"t pick up the garbage....oh they make a good show of it and push it around here and there...and they run around with garbage barrel carts on wheels that are generally empty and the junk...paper... plastic bottles ...dead cats...you name it stays on the streets.

Scenes from garbage city..
It's a mess and a shame...because historically the Zebaline did this for nothing....they can still collect garbage but there isn't as much of it now that the Brazillians are in charge...and so their profit margins are cut so that the miserable existence they've had for years is threatened.
Anyway...my friend Dana who used to work with me at CTV and her son Walker live in the area where garbage city is...and told Kim and I to grab a cab and come there and she'd take us to Garbage City.
Which we did....it`s a long cab ride out there...but still only cost about three bucks Canadian....Dana met us at the fountain (which dosen`t work of course) in the centre of her town with a cab that she has used before ( the last time she was in it they ran over dog) ¸so Kim and I hop in and off we go on the short drive to Garbage City where the Zebaline live and breath and breed and eat and sleep and dream of a better life I imagine. When you come down off the high plateau into the city...which is basically in the desert ....the first thing you notice is the smell...you don`t just notice it...it blasts you....off the main road in through a dust blown city street...and there you are Dante`s Infero of garbage hell. Garbage in huge bags stacked thirty feet high...trucks filled with car parts plastic bottles .....tin cans ....the bones of slaughtered beasts.... BUT amidst all this there is a working city....thousands of lives are going on. Cafes restaurants little food stalls...grocery stores barber shops clothing stores....people live here for God`s sake!
Looking through door ways as the cab navigated the narrow garbage clogged streets you can see men women and children sorting though these huge bags of garbage...one pile for cans..... one for plastic... one for rags....one for rotting food...which they in turn sell to local Coptic (Christian) pig farmers for their pigs.
Everything is cut up and reprocessed and sold back to industries who made it in the first place....the Chinese send boats over to buy what ever the Zabaline can give them. It looks horrible...but it`s the most efficient system of re-processing I`ve ever seen....and it costs nothing...the Zebaline actually make a living doing this...a living that is now threatened by the  foreign company the just takes the junk and dumps it in the desert....
It`s unbelivable...a whole city of garbage.

Walker Dana and Kim with some new friends at "Church of the Caves"
A secondary tour of the day was the Church of the Caves....you have to drive though Garbage City to get to the Church of the Caves....these churches date back thousands of years when the Muslim`s didn`t like Christians very much....(like what has changed!)...and the Christians wanted to worship...so the cut their churches.... caverns in solid rock walls making huge caves...in which they made amphetheatres with seating and everything....and they did it all in secret....the Muslims never twigged what was going on up there in them hills....must have been dumb bastards even then....today there are two huge church caves that the Christians can use and are quite the tourist attraction....
They were only discovered in 1972 and took at least twenty years to clean them out and make them serviceable again....

Wall carvings at Church of the Caves

So we toured the churches...and went out to get a cab...and of course there was none...that meant we had to walk down off the mountain and INTO and through Garbage City....it isn`t dangerous or anything but you really have to watch where you step...and the STINK is catastrophic....you can just imagine...overwhelming.....we managed to find a cab in the middle of a garbage inifested street and got the hell out of Dodge....and dodged more hell...we came back to the apt and threw our clothes into the washing machine....

It was truly the only ``Garbage`` day I`ve had in Egypt so far....talk soon...b