living with garbage

I had seen pictures of Garbage City. I had heard other people talk about what they had seen. I thought that I had talked myself through what I was going to see today, like I could somehow mentally prep for the visit.

Every city just has its bad parts. Maybe we can do something. help them somehow…or at least make their day by coming. I still remember coaching myself, in all my wisdom, during the bus ride over.

Nothing could have prepared me for what was there when I stepped out of the bus. I hopped out with my sunglasses, digital camera, and bottled spring water into a neighborhood that was sitting in scrap piles of garbage, food rotting in the afternoon sun, broken glass, mountains of old newspaper, and discarded junk. The narrow alleyways were lined with shops smaller than any of my bathrooms at home, most of them filled and overflowing into the streets with more garbage than I have ever seen. Stray cats and dogs dug into the filth and laid around on top of the piles.
And here’s the thing I really wasn’t ready for… human beings were packed into this place tighter than the garbage they lived in. I was shocked. I was repulsed. I was embarrassed. I was angry. I was overwhelmed, and I was very confused.

Ok, so here’s the deal with Garbage City. Its not that these people just don’t know how to dispose of their waste and it piles up. They collect it and stockpile it and recycle it for a living. The city government of Cairo both lacks any kind of organized refuse cleanup and faces a massive unemployment problem. The two come together in the creativity and desperation of the poor, uneducated population. These people feed their families by picking up, recycling, and reselling anything they can get their hands on. In addition to the strays I mentioned, pigs roam the streets eating the garbage, until fat enough to be sold as ham sandwiches and pork loins. To these people, the piles that they were sitting on and living in between was not junk… it was their way of surviving, their livelihood… and in that way, perhaps even a blessing. Come to think of it, they smiled a lot.

…almost too much. Something in me hated it. I wanted to ask the men working together standing on their own heap why they continued to pile bag after bag after bag. I wanted to tell the kids not to stomp through or kick around random wrappers, until I remembered that it was the floor to their house. I wanted to ask the old woman how long it had been since she had a breath of fresh air away from the stench that my pampered nose couldn’t stand and can’t forget. I began to get overwhelmed with the impossibility of freeing these people from this lifestyle. Then it hit me, what did I want to free them from? What did I want to free them to? Am I so engrained in my Western mindset that I just wanted steal those kids away to America so I could see them in new clothes, playing xbox, and having an “indoor” cat? Comfort equals happiness, right? Oh… well, what about cleanliness?

Not only does my americanized mind perhaps misidentify their true needs, but maybe even more so, the true solution (if there is one). In other words, I’m prone to see my efforts as being their rescue. I was rocked by their world today, and all of a sudden, I’m trying to think of how I could fix all their problems. I can’t think of anything more foolish, proud, or condescending. When will I start seeing such perspectives as some of the garbage I’m living in?
I wrestle through this still as I write it. Feeling compassion and wanting to do something about it are both good things. Wanting enough justice that people have their basic needs met is natural. And obviously, extreme poverty is a global problem keeping millions from reaching that minimum point. But today I was placed into a context that made me reevaluate just what it is that I want in regards to some of this.

What is it that they need? What the heck can I possibly give them? What have they given me through this?

I think I’ll go back and visit sometime soon.