I had an amazing last week, gifted with great and unique events! It is for sure the most interesting so far in Egypt and one of the most enriching I ever had.
To start with, going to the event “Towards a Culture of Sustainable Communities, Economies and Environment” brought me face to face with a totally alien group of people – waste pickers aka garbage collectors. More on this topic in the previous post.
Part of this event I also got to see Annie Leonard – the producer of the “Story of Stuff” video, she was a great speaker.
I also saw Al Gore talk on climate change. It was the best live speech I’ve ever seen. Amazing ice-breaking jokes, dramatic tone, change of mood, high energy …
I will remember the one with “I used to be the next president of the US”; cannot stop thinking how the US and the world would be if he actually won against George W. Bush.
He mentioned a very shocking fact: US had used in 10 years cans worth the Aluminum quantity enough to build 25 times the world’s aviation fleet.
In his opinion, Egypt’s chance to grow economically and to become green at the same time is to engage and be the main hub for the Desertec project initiated by the Germans.
He ended with “political will is a renewable resource” which is very relevant for Egypt’s reality.
The guy sitting next to me was the manager of a private equity company. Before the speech he told me that he invests in dairy and other consumer goods business. After the speech I told him “you should invest in green energy”, he answered “I will” … that sounds promising …
I ended the week in Hurghada, one the most popular tourist destinations in Egypt on the Red Sea coast. Not really my type of place but I enjoyed it anyways once I found a very good beach, swam a bit, saw some fish, had great sea food and pharaoh massage: D
I have to mention that this place is dominated by Russians, I bet there a few oligarchs around, there was a lot of writing in Russian on the streets and many waiters and staff were talking Russian. One of them told me he learned after taking a 2 months course in town and by practicing a lot with the tourists, he even changed his name, Max!
The Hurghada experience came just 24h hours after walking around in the slum so I felt like being on a different planet … after all, this is what Egypt is for me …
Monday, November 02, 2009
The poorest poor
Going to the event “Towards a Culture of Sustainable Communities, Economies and Environment” brought me face to face with a totally alien group of people – waste pickers aka garbage collectors. It was an international meeting of activists dealing with issues of waste picking, people in poverty trying to make a living from collecting and recycling/sorting garbage.
I got to learn about it as it happens in South Africa, India and Egypt. In India banning them to go with their carriages on the streets dramatically worsened their situation. By privatizing garbage collection, it became property of the company collecting it so waster pickers lost their “raw material”. In Egypt, Christians used to eat pork meat. Because they ate it, they grew pigs and to feed them they were collecting garbage and feeding them with what was edible. So this is how they became garbage collectors and then they went on separating the garbage and become part of the recycling process. So in Egypt this is a job Christians do – from 60 to 90 %% depending on the slum. In the slum I was in, about 100 000 people were doing this. Then the swine flu came and the Egyptian government decided to kill all pigs in the country thinking those pigs can play a role in the further expansion of the flu. So they did! That had a devastating effect on the people from Mokattam as their main source of income and meat was gone. That deepened the poverty of the poorest people in Cairo. Now they are left with garbage collection/recycling, trying to make a living from that. If you’ve seen an industrial park with factories next to each other, then you can imagine how this neighborhood looks like. But instead of factory buildings you find buildings filled with trash, paper, glass, plastic, cardboard, cans, PVC etc. And at the upper floors of those same buildings or just next to them people are living. I was shocked by this image of this 2-3 years old child sitting in a trash bin and eating something from his hand … A lot of child labor in this “garbage” industry, other kids like them go to school and watch TV or play computer games after school. These were helping their family earn a living. In the slum I saw 3 recycling schools, one for boys on shampoo recipients and 2 for girls, one on e-waste and one on textile and recycled paper production. The concept of the schools was “learn and earn” …
Something I will remember for a long time is the people separating broken glass with bare hands and the recycling lines for plastic, the black, the blue, the green …
Our guide thinks that 2 things played a huge role in the development of this community. First was religion and the fact that they build a complex of 7 churches in the neighborhood which are very impressive, carved in the mountain and to which even rich people come in pilgrimage. The second was technology which allowed them to become more productive so earn more.
As an individual there is something very simple I can do to help this people – separate the trash when I put it into bags. One simple rule is to put the dry with dry and wet with wet, this way it will be much easier for them to separate it. Or even better, separate plastic, paper, metal, organic …
please watch this video to get a better view of what i am talking about.
I got to learn about it as it happens in South Africa, India and Egypt. In India banning them to go with their carriages on the streets dramatically worsened their situation. By privatizing garbage collection, it became property of the company collecting it so waster pickers lost their “raw material”. In Egypt, Christians used to eat pork meat. Because they ate it, they grew pigs and to feed them they were collecting garbage and feeding them with what was edible. So this is how they became garbage collectors and then they went on separating the garbage and become part of the recycling process. So in Egypt this is a job Christians do – from 60 to 90 %% depending on the slum. In the slum I was in, about 100 000 people were doing this. Then the swine flu came and the Egyptian government decided to kill all pigs in the country thinking those pigs can play a role in the further expansion of the flu. So they did! That had a devastating effect on the people from Mokattam as their main source of income and meat was gone. That deepened the poverty of the poorest people in Cairo. Now they are left with garbage collection/recycling, trying to make a living from that. If you’ve seen an industrial park with factories next to each other, then you can imagine how this neighborhood looks like. But instead of factory buildings you find buildings filled with trash, paper, glass, plastic, cardboard, cans, PVC etc. And at the upper floors of those same buildings or just next to them people are living. I was shocked by this image of this 2-3 years old child sitting in a trash bin and eating something from his hand … A lot of child labor in this “garbage” industry, other kids like them go to school and watch TV or play computer games after school. These were helping their family earn a living. In the slum I saw 3 recycling schools, one for boys on shampoo recipients and 2 for girls, one on e-waste and one on textile and recycled paper production. The concept of the schools was “learn and earn” …
Something I will remember for a long time is the people separating broken glass with bare hands and the recycling lines for plastic, the black, the blue, the green …
Our guide thinks that 2 things played a huge role in the development of this community. First was religion and the fact that they build a complex of 7 churches in the neighborhood which are very impressive, carved in the mountain and to which even rich people come in pilgrimage. The second was technology which allowed them to become more productive so earn more.
As an individual there is something very simple I can do to help this people – separate the trash when I put it into bags. One simple rule is to put the dry with dry and wet with wet, this way it will be much easier for them to separate it. Or even better, separate plastic, paper, metal, organic …
please watch this video to get a better view of what i am talking about.
