Category: Egypt

The slum you need

2 October, 2009 (10:08) | Cairo, Cities, Egypt, Ragpickers, Sanitation, Slums, Water | No comments

By: David A. Smith
 
They’re called zabaleen, after an Arabic phrase meaning ‘garbage people’, and you wouldn’t want to be one:
 

Most of the inhabitants of Garbage City are Coptic Christians.
An estimated 60,000 – 70,000 Zabaleen live in an area known locally as Garbage City, and are mostly descendants of poor farmers from Upper Egypt who settled [...]