Trip to Garbage City July 2025

 

There is a place in Makattam, Egypt where they take the garbage. Instead of a dump, they take it into the city and people in their houses pick through it and sort it. Obviously, the people here are very poor and a high percent of them are Christian. Before the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009-10 they have thousands of pigs that helped eat the garbage. However, even though pigs did not transmit the flu, the Egyptian government decided to kill most of the pigs, as Muslims feel they are unclean. This had a very detrimental impact. This picture is the outside of the city. Normal cars cannot drive into it, as the streets are too narrow.
We were visiting a NGO, APE Makattam, which helps the community through teaching their children and teaching skills for women to help support their families. Here is the lunch for little ones. Note almost pure pasta.
The NGO also takes care of babies. They employ about 60 people, mostly women and care for their children.
Here are some of the things they make. All of their items are made from materials taken from the sorted garbage.
Here is how narrow the streets are. We took an Uber to the start of the city and then had to take a 3 wheeled tuttut into the city. It should have taken 30 minutes to drive there, but it was 1 1/2 hours. 
Mariam and her two daughters, Daniella and Joyce left for Bulgaria this week. There was a party for Mariam's going away at the church and we left early to go to her apartment to say goodbye to the 2 girls.
Kathleen in the tuttut. It was quite the adventure in traveling.







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