Egyptian Update

 I’ve been in Cairo almost two weeks now, and a report would probably do some good. We’ll start with first impressions.

The architecture and upkeep of Cairo changes drastically from area to area. In some districts, I’m guessing the ones with more foreign traffic, you see huge hotels, fancy cars, and alternating rows of palm trees and polished granite obelisks. In the others, where people actually live and work, it is quite different. 

Cairo is dirty-really, really dirty. The air is grey – not the sky, the air. There is so much particulate matter floating around that everything, indoors or outside, is coated with a layer of dust. There is much more litter here than in Graz, and there is probably more litter here than in any European city. Plastics, construction waste, and the occasional dead stray line the streets with no prospects of quick removal. Every hundred yards or so there is an overflowing dumpster with a huge pile of waste sitting next to it, even in the affluent neighborhoods.  

Speaking of garbage, David gave me a tour of “Garbage City,” an area of Cairo everyone should know about. Garbage City is a community of Coptic Christian Egyptians who take most of Cairo’s waste for their own personal use. Mountains (no exaggeration) of trash are stored and sorted: food is given to livestock and pets, reparable items are repaired, and glassware and plastics are sent to a recycling center for processing. Since all of this is done by hand, Garbage City is home to one of the most efficient recycling rates in the world. I make it sound almost pleasant – my apologies. It wasn’t. Well, it was but it wasn’t. Let me start over: to understand Garbage City you must know what it looks like. I have no photographs, so we’re kind of disadvantaged in that respect, but we’ll see if a written description can suffice: 

David and I stepped out of the cab, just off the highway but not quite inside the district they call Garbage City. From where we were standing I could make out unremarkable apartment buildings of the kind you see all over Cairo: old and brown, with rebar sticking out of the top since there’s no need for roofs in a land without rain.  The rest of the view was obscured by an overpass.

As we made our way beneath the overpass, I noticed large deposits of mud around the concrete supports. The whole underside of the overpass was wet, and the smell carried on the humidity clued me in to the fact that this mud couldn’t have been just dirt. Something, probably many things had decayed there until it was nothing more than sludge, collecting garbage and dust as it dissolved.

David: “Looks like they cleaned the streets today.”  

Lovely.

The view opened up, and we were greeted by a new smell. It was less wet and natural than the one beneath the overpass; it reminded me of taking out the garbage or driving past a factory.

David: “Man, the smell isn’t that bad today – sometimes when I come here, I can barely breathe.”

Lucky me.


 I was right about the buildings being standard Cairo apartments, but up close I saw that the similarities were limited to the exterior. There were no lights inside any of the buildings, and it was too dark to see their interiors. David and I walked and talked. We stopped at a kiosk and grabbed two bottles of Sprite. Two little kids asked for our names – that’s a really common greeting here in Egypt. Kids and teenagers see two “cool Americans” and try to be as nice as possible, and what’s the best  first step in getting to know someone? Name.

David: “Look to your right.”

Dear God.

By then the angle of the sun had changed, making it easier to see the ground floor of one of the apartment buildings. It was filled with trash. It wasn't an apartment complex at all, but rather a windowless shell of a building that housed a pile of garbage. This wasn’t something the average reader or even a well-travelled one could easily understand. If you haven’t been to the third world, I’m pretty sure you have no idea the ruin humanity is capable of surviving in.

Perhaps you think I’m overreacting just because I like to wax poetic or indulge in personal drama. Perhaps I can change your mind with an analogy.

Step 1: Think about what you throw away on a weekly basis. What’s in those garbage cans? Newspapers, cardboard boxes, empty wrappers, used napkins and paper towels, rotten food. Imagine saving all of it for a year – every last bit of waste. You don’t get to refrigerate it.

Step 2: Empty all of this waste into your garage, kitchen, or living room. 

Step 3: Live with it.

The two differences between this analogy and the circumstances endured by Garbage City’s residents are that the filth in which they live belongs to someone else, and that their livelihood is to sort a perpetual stream of refuse until they die.

Every building’s ground floor was packed to the ceiling with some kind of trash. The smell got worse. We moved on. I noticed that the streets were busy. We were passed by cars, carts, and hundreds of pedestrians, many of whom were hauling large bags of Greater Cairo’s excess. The road to the center of Garbage City was an uphill climb, in all senses of the phrase.

We finally met the guy David wanted to visit: Ashraf, an Egyptian in his mid-20s who is working with my brother to organize an English class for people in the district. Apparently he had invited us to have dinner with his family. I was completely out of the loop – he and David spoke very little English together.  

Outside the entrance to Ashraf’s family’s apartment building were four old men sitting on cardboard mats. They greeted David and Ashraf in the way any Egyptian would, but when they saw me they smiled at each other and told David that his brother was very beautiful. David said they were being sincere.

The ground floor of Ashraf’s building was just like all the others. Brick walls were missing large sections, dust coated every surface, and piles of unsorted trash took up every inch of space except the path to the dilapidated staircase. Inside the apartment it was surprisingly clean. It was clear that the women of the house do everything they can to make their family’s living space as unlike the outside as possible. At the dinner table we spoke a lot of English, not for my sake, but because Ashraf wanted to impress his father. When the family saw an American smoothly speaking Arabic and a pale giant with hair like the Prophet’s, I believe they were suitably impressed.

We were served an authentic Egyptian dinner, and it did not disappoint. We had chicken, fish, a tomato-onion-cucumber salad, fruit, and homemade pita with tahini.

Ashraf: “He doesn’t know how to do it.”

 I had a bit of a cultural conflict with Ashraf when I handled the fish differently than they do in Egypt. Apparently removing the spinal cord in its entirety, thus instantly removing the ribs, neural spines and the danger of choking, is something I did because I’m an ignorant American who has never experienced something as exotic and exclusively Egyptian as eating fish. That was the first cultural lesson of my time here in Cairo: if you don’t do it the native way, you’re doing it wrong.

After dinner we went to a massive church complex built into the side of a mountain. Like most of the Vatican’s efforts, it was aesthetically impressive but environmentally incongruous – this complex is a part of Garbage City. It’s in the same place. Its construction and upkeep, both considerable investments, are paid for by the Catholic Church, yet the buildings next door are falling apart and the people living within them receive too little to escape or at least modernize their accommodations and trash-sorting methods. Why spend so much money on a fancy church while the ones you want to save are living in filth?

The sun went down and we headed back to the overpass. The streets were even more alive than they were that afternoon. Neon signs pointed out shops, cafes, and kiosks. Strangely enough, I felt safe. At no point did I wonder if someone was about to antagonize me in any way. It may have been because of the unexpected vibrancy to the community. People were smiling.  How crazy is that?

And that’s the end of my Garbage City story. Let’s move on to sobia: the greatest drink of all time. It tastes like thin, heavily sweetened coconut milk, and I swear it could raise the dead, considering the boost it gives to those who are living. I will find out how to make it, and I will bring it back; this I pledge.  

Microbuses: like taxis, but so much better. They’re cramped, loud, fast, and fun because no foreigner ever thinks to hop on and take a ride - David and I are the exceptions to the rule. We get stares but no ridicule since the other passengers hear David’s Arabic.

Taxis! White taxis are a risk because they operate on a meter, and you could either get stuck in traffic or taken on the long way to your destination. Black taxis have negotiable rates, but things can get ridiculous fast. David got in a pretty heated argument with one very disagreeable driver who tried to wring one extra Egyptian Pound out of him. David got in a fight over one Pound. It was awesome.

As some of you know, I got pretty ill. David was sick as well, but now I’m better and David’s just got a terrible cough.

Anything else? Ah, the dogs. We’re housesitting for a friend of David’s, and we have to take care of their dogs while we’re here. For reasons I can’t understand, they behave exactly like my Austrian host brothers Christian and Phillip. The older one is quieter and more reserved, and the young golden retriever is too energetic for her own good. 

Egyptian service - how could I leave this one out? At every restaurant we've been to, it's been very clear that customer satisfaction is second only to the comfort and convenience of the server. Any food or groceries that you ask to be delivered, no matter how simple and small the order is, takes at least ninety minutes to get there, if it ever gets there at all.


And that's all I've got. Next weekend we're going to Siwa, a desert oasis on the Libyan border - be on the lookout for another super-special video entry.

Cheers, 

Jared