el Muqattam

Cairo's rubbish. It all ends up here, a neighbourhood of reclaiming and recycling.

It pains me to chuck recyclables into the bin. But after seeing el Muqattam, it all makes sense. Everything is being recycled by this community. How the rubbish ends up here, I've yet to find out, but the streets are chock-a-block with trucks delivering huge amounts of the stuff, seemingly sorted or semi-sorted. Men with receipt books oversee the coming and going of sacks and bundles, while every house has an open fronted downstairs piled high with a different material - paper here, PET bottles there, white plastic, cardboard, aluminium cans each in their place. Amongst the heaps, people sit, sorting, trimming, flattening or bundling. And smiling.

This isn't an industrial estate, it is a residential area. Above the shop-lots where the rubbish sorting takes place are people's homes. There are Coptic Christian churches, schools, simple cafes and small shops selling basic necessities. Old men sit drinking coffee and smoking, children play, work, look after younger siblings. Trucks piled high with cardboard share the narrow streets with donkey carts, young men shouldering enormous sacks and girls balancing trays of bread. All this amongst the piles of rubbish, stench of bins. I've never seen, or imagined, anything like it.

It looks and smells like an unpleasant life, yet the people there seemed positive, happy and welcoming. There was activity everywhere, an industrious feel of people making a living. Children poured out of school in funky uniform dungarees and babies played in the rubbish. I couldn't help wondering about the health of these kids, but maybe they just have fantastic immunity. They certainly looked in good shape.       

                   

            

These kids were using shears to cut off the ring of metal joining the top to the bottom of aluminium cans. These curls of metal were dropped into a bag while the rest of the can was tossed into a tub. So while we melt down the whole thing for re-use (I think), here the different parts have different uses.

The whole place was fascinating, on many levels. I would love to talk with these people, hear their stories and outlook on life. What is the education and healthcare like in their community? How do they see themselves and their future? And I would love to find out more about the rubbish and its processing. I think I can feel an article coming on.