Christian Garbage Pickers; Life in Cairo’s slums

Children of Helwan

In a Coptic slum in Cairo’s Helwan suburb, sewage filth settles into a swamp of black liquid off the main street. Near the ditch, heaps of garbage blanket the dusty road. We arrived at dawn, roosters were crowing and worn-out men rose from bed for morning tea and a day of trash sifting. This desert community is the latest and the most impoverished among Cairo’s garbage pickers.

“There’s no water here,” I was told. “You can pay for it, but these people can’t afford that. They walk or ride donkeys in the desert heat for three kilometers for water, but the well is often dry. They don’t bathe, they don’t wash their clothes. There’s hardly enough water to drink.”

We drove to this isolated slum to visit a school ran by a Christian group in the area. Trudging up the hills, we passed five and six-year-olds on donkey carts filled with massive sacks of the city’s refuse. The stained pants of street-side boys with feet in the air and faces in dumpsters, searching through the filth to find a recyclable treasure caught our attention. For generations Cairo’s poor have served as the city’s garbage collectors. Today 50,000 garbage-area dwellers do much of the work. Ninety percent of them are Christians.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Young girl in Helwan

We approached a Muslim cemetery less than a kilometer from our destination. Ornate red-brick walls enclose the tombs of Cairo’s dead. The graves, erected high atop the hills, were less than a kilometer away from the vast slum, literary hugging the valley floor under desert cliffs. “This valley floods when it rains,” said my guide. “But, the government wants to hide the garbage collectors from view. They’re an embarrassment.” These homes, in contrast to the flamboyant graves, are built of mud with iron sheet roofing. “These are the poorest families I’ve ever seen,” he continued.

Arriving at the schoolyard, also within range of the ditch’s foul odor, children were happily playing. “My parents took me to these slums when I was a child to show me how fortunate I was,” my guide said. In the classrooms, children recited Psalms, and said their ABC’s in both Arabic and English. Flies swarmed the room and nestled on the children’s faces; they hardly flinched.

Outside the classroom, a teacher scrubbed a girl’s feet and washed her face, an act of love and servitude. “This is the only place children can wash,” the teacher said. “Many diseases are spread through cuts in the feet when sorting through trash. We must keep them clean and treat their diseases. Christ tells us that the greatest leader must also be the greatest servant.”

Education is the chief method to reverse the cycle of poverty for the community’s children. “Garbage collectors have existed for generations. Unless you give these kids a chance at something better, they too will collect garbage,” said the school administrator. “To be very poor is to have no decisions. We offer these kids the opportunity to make a decision.”

The school also seeks to instill a firm foundation in the children’s faith. “After kindergarten, these kids will go to a state school and be forced to memorize the Quran. We want them to have a personal relationship with Christ first.”

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Garbage collectors in Mokattam

Cairo’s garbage districts are notoriously populated by Coptic Christian families who have been shunned by the Egyptian government. Mokattam, one of the city’s largest and oldest garbage communities, is a historical area for persecuted Christians. Also known for its famous Cave Church carved out of a chalky mountain-side, the church’s Coptic clergy essentially govern the area. While the government works to keep the Christians poor, as it did during the swine flu endemic by slaughtering the community’s pigs which were used by the collectors to dispose of organic waste, the local church has stepped up to provide aid. They now aim to address virtually every need of Mokattam’s 30,000 inhabitants, from fund raising to fixing sewers, to making sure that homes has running water.