I just saw the documentary Garbage Dreams on the Egyptian al Zabbaleen area by Mai Iskandar in the Rhode Island International Film Festival. It is indeed a great documentary – very moving and concise.
The documentary follows the story of three teenage boys who grew up on the outskirts of Egypt in one of the poorest informal settlements in Egypt, and whose lives revolve around collecting and recycling garbage from metro Cairo. It follows their dreams over a two year period [although the documentary was filmed over a 4 year period] as they live their ups and downs, and conveys their aspirations and humble dreams. The most they dreamed of was getting married – and even though two of the boys are taken on a trip to Wales to see how garbage was recycled there, one of them still dreamed of staying in Cairo and emulating Wales’s methods, while the other dreamed of leaving ‘either to Europe or America.’ Their situation worsens when Egypt decides to contract foreign companies to collect garbage in a ‘more civilized way’, leaving this community completely defenseless and increasing their poverty.
The Zabbaleen community happens to be a Coptic Christian community, and is up in the hills in Mokattem, just behind another larger, mostly Muslim, informal settlement called Manshiet Nasser. While many Copts have hailed the documentary as a documentary about the ‘Copts’, it really is a documentary that touches far more than this one issue. It is a documentary about the forgotten poor, the environment, illiteracy, closed doors, and the politics of corruption. It is also a ’social statement’ where even the ‘educated community’ at large is refusing and is skeptical about the concept of recycling.
As Mai Iskandar acknowledged in an interview, the Zabbaleen only happened to be Christians because when they migrated from rural areas they came with their chicken and pigs.. the pigs being raised only by Christians since it is considered ‘haram’ in Islam. Their natural choice of profession was garbage collection precisely because of the pigs who ate this garbage.
If you look at the documentary with a ‘non-religious’ eye, you will note many eye-opening moments – such as when the boys are flabergasted that the new foreign companies recycle only 40% of garbage and bury the rest, whereas they themselves recycled 80%. The community was completely ignored in the decision making process to move to more ‘civilized’ methods, and instead of empowering that community and helping them advance, the government chose to completely overlook and ignore them, leaving them to their destiny.
The documentary ends before the ’swine flu’ crisis and the disastrous decision made by the Egyptian government to slaughter all pigs, thus further alienating and impoverishing this community. However from my own experience at the Zabbaleen area, I can say that there are non-profit organizations helping them. In fact, Yusreya Sawiris, mother of the famed billionaire Nagib Sawiris, and businesswoman Laila Iskandar, are both there in full force and they are credited with the entire recycling project and factory. I should mention that my father, a brilliant engineer, was actually recruited by Yusreya to oversee the factory’s equipment and machines, a project that he undertook until the day he died in 2005 at the age of 90, after which the factory closed down because the machines stopped functioning. Too bad their efforts were not mentioned in the documentary, but then I also know that Yusreya hates publicity, and the movie’s focus is not that at all. I also need to mention my own involvement in Manshiet Nasser where I used to work with the poorest of the poor, and still have connections there and I help out whenever I can. In fact, they used to tell me that the people of the Zabballeen were ‘the poor people’ and I used to smile. Poverty is relative, I guess.
In any case, because of my experience in Manshiet Nasser, a mostly Muslim community, I know that this documentary, if filmed about Manshiet Nasser, will be just as heart-wrenching.
Poverty knows no religion. Neither does corruption.
Kudos to Mai Iskandar and her fantastic documentary.
Trailer
