On Cairo's Secret City
I arrived to Cairo hungry, exhausted and overwhelmed. I'd not slept properly in a couple of days, and lost my phone in the airport. After about three hours of searching with help from the authorities, I gave up and took a bus into Tahrir Square. The noise and the dust were stifling! I made the quickest route to the largest bowl of Egypt's famed Koushari that I could. For the uninitiated, Koushari means literally mixture, in this case specifically one of rice, pasta, lentils, chickpeas, fried onions, tomato sauce and optional hot sauce and lemon juice. After various errands, and having my first scamming experience in Egypt, I arrived at my host's house and practically died on the couch.
I was most interested in Garbage City due to my propensity for being a bit of a refuse raccoon, trash panda, or dumpster dingo if you will (for those who are bewildered as to the meaning of these three zoomorphic epithets, read: I eat out of the garbage). The people of Garbage City are primarily Coptic, and are the unofficial garbage collectors of Cairo, as Cairo did not until recently have any form of state-sponsored refuse collection. So, for almost a century these people have collected household waste for a small fee and recycled in the region of 85 % of all waste - note, the EU standard is somewhere around 20 %. The profit comes primarily from the sale of raw materials like paper and plastic. This of course means that an enormous sorting operation must take place, and thus we have Garbage City. Each family has it's own material that they are responsible for recycling.
I managed to navigate Cairo's transport system and get into the slum. Of course there were many wide-eyed stares from the inhabitants, but usually accompanied by cheerful waves, smiles, and greetings. As you might expect, the appearance of this place was not exactly clean. The streets and walls were black with a centimeters-thick continuous layer of grime, there was a stench of decaying food, and my white t-shirt became two shades darker within about ten minutes. I of course had no plan, and instead just wandered the streets seeing who I could talk to. The streets were lined with people of all ages squatting over piles of rubbish, broken up by enormous mounds of trash. They smiled and waved at me and I smiled and waved back, answering their questions as best I could. At one point a woman shouted, "Can you help me?" I turned to see her and two friends struggling to lift one of the enormous garbage bags onto a truck, so I of course assisted - to the sound of raucous laughter and applause.
I quitted the three ladies and decided that it was time to find something to eat; the aforementioned Koushari (which evidently became my drug of choice in Egypt) was available and I sat with an old man and chatted over our bowls. It was actually one of the most delightful examples of this dish I encountered in Egypt, and cost the equivalent of about $0.35, which the proprietor of the establishment tried to prevent me from paying, but with quite a lot of effort I prevailed and managed to force the five-pound note into his hand.
I walked a bit further and was greeted by a man who spoke pretty good English. He asked me to come into his home, have tea and meet his family. Though the outside of his house was just as disheveled and dirty as the rest of the surroundings, the inside was pristine - not a speck of dust anywhere, no trinket out of place. This man's occupation was slightly elevated compared to that of his peers. He sought out shoes that were thrown away, repaired them, and sold them online. He had boxes and boxes of them, some of which were very expensive brands. The relative lucrativeness of his role meant that he was able to afford to send his daughters to a better school on the other side of town, in the hopes that they might one day might not live in Garbage City.
I also visited the adjacent, more touristed Cave Church that day. Although the attendees primarily derived from Garbage City, their place of worship was pristine. As I said previously, I also visited a couple of other slums, but unfortunately I shan't be writing of those in great depth. Suffice it to say that Cairo hides a lot of secrets; people whose poverty is unknown even to many of its (more affluent) residents. I was chatting with a young Egyptian student who stated that what he loved about Cairo was that there wasn't that much poverty compared to the rest of Africa. What is astounding, and oft repeated by visitors like myself, is how welcoming, generous and warm-hearted such people tend to be.
The pharaonic ruins, general scamming culture, and noise of Egypt's capital shall not be the focus of this article. Instead, I want to focus on a place slightly less visited, namely Cairo's Garbage City at Manshiya al-Nasr. I elected to go to this place because I am really bad at being a tourist. Even at the most elaborate, impressive, and ancient of cultural ruins I soon get bored and wonder if it was worth my money. Slums are free and the people are interesting. I also visited some other impoverished areas like The City of the Dead and Geziret al-Dahab.
I was most interested in Garbage City due to my propensity for being a bit of a refuse raccoon, trash panda, or dumpster dingo if you will (for those who are bewildered as to the meaning of these three zoomorphic epithets, read: I eat out of the garbage). The people of Garbage City are primarily Coptic, and are the unofficial garbage collectors of Cairo, as Cairo did not until recently have any form of state-sponsored refuse collection. So, for almost a century these people have collected household waste for a small fee and recycled in the region of 85 % of all waste - note, the EU standard is somewhere around 20 %. The profit comes primarily from the sale of raw materials like paper and plastic. This of course means that an enormous sorting operation must take place, and thus we have Garbage City. Each family has it's own material that they are responsible for recycling.
I quitted the three ladies and decided that it was time to find something to eat; the aforementioned Koushari (which evidently became my drug of choice in Egypt) was available and I sat with an old man and chatted over our bowls. It was actually one of the most delightful examples of this dish I encountered in Egypt, and cost the equivalent of about $0.35, which the proprietor of the establishment tried to prevent me from paying, but with quite a lot of effort I prevailed and managed to force the five-pound note into his hand.
I walked a bit further and was greeted by a man who spoke pretty good English. He asked me to come into his home, have tea and meet his family. Though the outside of his house was just as disheveled and dirty as the rest of the surroundings, the inside was pristine - not a speck of dust anywhere, no trinket out of place. This man's occupation was slightly elevated compared to that of his peers. He sought out shoes that were thrown away, repaired them, and sold them online. He had boxes and boxes of them, some of which were very expensive brands. The relative lucrativeness of his role meant that he was able to afford to send his daughters to a better school on the other side of town, in the hopes that they might one day might not live in Garbage City.
I also visited the adjacent, more touristed Cave Church that day. Although the attendees primarily derived from Garbage City, their place of worship was pristine. As I said previously, I also visited a couple of other slums, but unfortunately I shan't be writing of those in great depth. Suffice it to say that Cairo hides a lot of secrets; people whose poverty is unknown even to many of its (more affluent) residents. I was chatting with a young Egyptian student who stated that what he loved about Cairo was that there wasn't that much poverty compared to the rest of Africa. What is astounding, and oft repeated by visitors like myself, is how welcoming, generous and warm-hearted such people tend to be.
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