Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: What does Zabbaleen refer to?
The Zabbaleen (Egyptian Arabic: زبالين‎ Zabbalīn, IPA:[zæbbæˈliːn]) is a word which literally means "garbage people" in Egyptian Arabic.[2] The contemporary use of the word in Egyptian Arabic is to mean "garbage collectors". In cultural contexts, the word refers to teenagers and adults who have served as Cairo's informal garbage collectors since approximately the 1940s. The Zabbaleen (singular: زبال Zabbāl, [zæbˈbæːl]) are also known as Zarraba (singular: Zarrab), which means "pig-pen operators."[2] The word Zabbalīn came from the Egyptian Arabic word zebāla ([zeˈbæːlæ], زبالة) which means "garbage".
Spread out among seven different settlements scattered in the Greater Cairo Urban Region, the Zabbaleen population is between 50,000 and 70,000.[3] The largest settlement is Mokattam village, nicknamed "Garbage City," located at the foot of the Mokattam Mountains, next to Manshiyat Naser.[4] The Zabbaleen community in Mokattam Village has a population of around 20,000 to 30,000, over 90 percent of which are Coptic Christians.[5]
The municipal authorities grew increasingly intolerant of the Zabbaleen's donkey carts, which, according to Assaad, were considered an eyesore and a traffic hazard by the government.[27] This was precisely in the neighborhoods that were being more fully served given Cairo's narrow, winding streets that are not wide-enough for large garbage trucks. Regardless, in the early 1990s, according to Fahmi & Sutton, the garbage collectors had to comply with the municipality's requirements to use motorized trucks, rather than donkey carts, as the authorities introduced a system of mechanization to transport solid waste.[20] Because the Zabbaleen were required to accommodate to these new requirements for a mechanized system without any government support, including technical, financial, or educational support, they resorted to the selling of small plots of land back in their ancestral villages, use of personal savings, or credit loans to acquire the necessary capital to purchase the trucks.[20] According to Fahmi, within the EPC, the Wahiya conducted administration, marketed the company's services, collected the fees from tenants, and supervised service deliveries. On the other end, the Zabbaleen, "many of whom might otherwise have been homeless and without employment, collected and transported the waste." In more recent years, as the Zabbaleen became more involved in the work, some received a minimal fee from the Wahiya.[17]
Therefore, the Zabbaleen can be distinguished from the Wahiya in at least two significant ways.
The government authorities do not compensate the Zabbaleen for these changes, and as a result, the takeover of waste collection threatens the socio-economic sustainability of the Zabbaleen community.[11] More recently, the Zabbaleen have faced another challenge when the Egyptian Agricultural Ministry ordered the culling of all pigs in April 2009, in response to national fears over the possible spread of H1N1 influenza.[12][13]
Although Mokattam village is relatively close to the center of Cairo, it is very inaccessible because it is situated on a plateau surrounded by the cliffs of the Mokattam hills on one side and by the Manshiet Nasser squatter settlement on the other side.[4] Vehicular access to the Zabbaleen Mokattam is possible only through three entrances, two of which are accessible only by crossing through the crowded, narrow, and steep streets of Manshiet Nasser.[4] Because of the high congestion and road traffic, conflicts between the residents of the Manshiet Nasser settlement and the Zabbaleen, who need to haul their donkey carts loaded with garbage through the streets of Manshiet Nasser have often broken out. Occasionally, these conflicts took on religious overtones, as the inhabitants of the Manshiet Nasser settlement are mostly Muslims, whereas the inhabitants of the Mokattam settlement are mostly Coptic Christians.[4]
The initial and very integral step of sorting the trash is the responsibility of Zabbaleen community members who own pigs. The pigs are fed the organic waste. After the organic waste has been eaten by the pigs, the rest of the trash is sorted into different categories such, as PT plastic, paper, cans, etc.[22] Thus, as Engi Wassef, the director of Marina of the Zabbaleen notes, "One of the reasons why Coptic Christians are given a kind of monopoly status on the garbage collection and sorting system is because the Muslim religion does not allow for breeding or eating or living near pigs. It's considered a dirty animal."[22]
Egypt is a Muslim-majority country. However, over 90 percent of the Zabbaleen community in the Mokattam village are Coptic Christians.[5] Communities where almost everyone is Christian are rare to find in Egypt outside of the Zabbaleen community of Mokattam. According to Engi Wassef, in her commentary in her documentary film Marina of the Zabbaleen, many people in the Zabbaleen village say that even if they could live outside of the village or buy a house elsewhere, they would not because they are happy to live within their own religious community and freely practice their religion.[22]
The pig cull negatively affected the Zabbaleen in several ways. First, because the pigs eat the organic waste, they are a vital component in their recycling system, the pig cull literally destroyed the Zabbaleen recycling system. Deprived of their pig herds, the Zabbaleen stopped collecting such organic trash, leaving food piles to rot in the streets, leading to the increase of trash in the streets.[51] According to Engi Wassef, recycling and sorting activities in the Zabbaleen villages all but ceased after the pig cull, because without the pigs, the sorting and recycling activities of the Zabbaleen became economically unfeasible. Less trash was brought into the village, because there was no place to put the trash. Hence, the entire recycling system was broken, placing the Zabbaleen out of work.
In the 1930s and 40s, there was a second wave of migration. This new group, mostly landless peasants, is known as the Zabbaleen. The descendants of subsistence farmers, the Zabbaleen originate from the El Badari district in Asyut, a rural region in Upper Egypt, which is the southern part of Egypt.[17][18][19] As farming ceased to be a viable way of life, the Zabbaleen faced economic hardships which prompted them to migrate to Cairo in search of work. Henceforth, the Wahiya collaborated with the Zabbaleen, who purchased waste from the Wahiya for use as fodder for pig farming. Initially, the Zabbaleen settled in the Imbaba district of the Giza governorate, but were given a four-day eviction notice from the governor of Giza in 1970.[4] Thereafter, the Zabbaleen settled mainly in an abandoned quarry at the foot of the Mokattam hills, east of Cairo, which is under the jurisdiction of the Cairo Governorate.[21] Although the governor of Cairo granted the Zabbaleen administrative permission to settle in the area, he did not issue a lease or legal tenure. Thus, because of their precarious situation, the Zabbaleen initially lived in makeshift settlements of tin huts, made mostly of barrels that the Zabbaleen found amongst the waste that they collected.[4][17][18][22] This Zabbaleen community later emerged as the informal garbage collectors and recyclers of Cairo. The literal meaning of the word Zabbaleen is garbage-men (singular: Zabbal). The Zabbaleen are also known as Zarraba (singular: Zarrab), which means pig pen operators, because they raise pigs that eat the organic components of the waste that they collect.[2]
This governmental decision poses a major setback to the Zabbaleen because pigs are an essential component to their recycling and sorting system, in which the pigs eat all of the organic waste. Immediately after the culling of pigs, observers have noticed a visible increase of trash piles and piles of rotting food on the streets of Cairo.[14] There are also worries that the Egyptian government is seeking to remove the Mokattam village entirely and relocate the Zabbaleen further outside of Cairo by a further 25km, to a 50-feddan plot (1 feddan = 0.420 hectares or 1.038 acres) in Cairo's eastern desert settlement of Katameya.[15][16]
In addition to their use in sorting out organic waste, pigs are an important source of income. After the pigs have grown, the Zabbaleen sell the pig-meat to large tourist facilities. According to Fahmi and Sutton, "Hitherto, the Zabbaleen claimed to collect 6,000 tons of MSW a day, of which 60% was food waste and organic garbage which their pigs consume. Every 6 months, the waste collectors sell adult pigs, 5 to 15 pigs to a trader for LE 7 per kilogram (US$ 1.25 per kilogram). The trader then takes pigs to the slaughterhouses, where a kilogram is sold for LE 30–35 (US$ 5–6.25). The waste collectors can earn around LE 450 (US$ 80) per pig."[41]
First, the Wahiya retained control over the access and collection rights to the monthly fees paid by the residents, whereas the Zabbaleen usually do not have a share in the monthly fees paid by residents. In fact, the Zabbaleen are often obliged to pay the Wahiya in order to gain access to the waste garbage.[3] However, what the Zabbaleen do acquire are the rights to the refuse itself.[23] Hence, the relationship between the Wahiya and the Zabbaleen was hierarchically constituted. The Wahiya acted as the middlemen between the Zabbaleen and Cairo's households.[19] Quoting Assaad, "The wahiya assume overall responsibility for regular removal of the wastes vis-à-vis residents and building owners and are responsible for collection of the wastes from individual dwelling units to the street level. The Zabbaleen, on the other hand, are responsible for the haulage and disposal of the wastes."[23]
The film transforms the gritty landfill Zabbaleen village (known locally as "Garbage City"), one of the very few Coptic Christian communities in a mostly Muslim-populated Cairo, into a beautiful, dreamlike portrait of family, childhood, and spirituality.
Banned in Egypt, "Marina of the Zabbaleen" premiered in April 2008 at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film was hailed as a gorgeous and "painterly" account of the troubled daily life of an obscure but revealing Middle Eastern people.
The subcontracting of MSW collection to foreign companies had an immediate negative impact upon the Zabbaleen community as documented in Mai Iskander's film, Garbage Dreams. Contracting out MSW to foreign companies meant that the Zabbaleen would lose access to garbage, which was the basis of their recycling and sorting activities. In the documentary Garbage Dreams, Laila, a social worker in Mokattam Village, says, "The city contracted with foreign waste disposal companies because they perceived the Zabbaleen to be old-fashioned. But they didn't come tell us, "You need to modernize your ways." This was all done behind our backs. "we're replacing you with the companies." So we can be like the developed countries."[11] In contrast, because officials from the Cairo Cleaning and Beautification Authority (CCBA) regarded the Zabbaleen recycling methods as unhygienic and backwards, they were optimistic about the process and hoped for a positive impact on Cairo's environment. However, because the mechanized equipment of the foreign companies are too large for the streets of Cairo, citizens were required to bring their trash to designated collection centers and bins, which were not always placed in easily accessible locations.[47] Therefore, residents preferred to continue to have their trash picked up from their doors by the Zabbaleen, who were able to come directly to their doors even if their homes were located in narrow alleys. Eventually, the foreign companies realized that they needed the Zabbaleen and thus, subcontracted them.[49] This system failed, however, because the companies underpaid the Zabbaleen. According to Fahmi and Sutton, "while company sources mention salaries ranging between LE 300 to LE 450 per month (US $50–$75), some Zabbaleen claim that the salaries on offer are actually closer to LE 150 per month." One Zabbal with eight children gave a similar figure: whereas he used to make LE 10 a day (US $1.60), foreign contractors offered him LE 5 a day.[47]
Significantly, the foreign companies, despite the large value of their contracts, are only required to recycle 20 percent of the waste that they collect; the remaining 80 percent are placed into landfills.[47] In contrast, the Zabbaleen recycle up to 80 percent of all the MSW that they collect. The foreign companies collected the trash from garbage bins placed at central collection points on the streets. However, many inhabitants of Cairo preferred the door-to-door garbage pick-up done by the Zabbaleen, especially because the bins were not plentifully located or located in inconvenient places.[47] Thus, residents expressed their discontent with the new system, especially because they were being charged more for what seemed to be a more inconvenient system. Under the new system, residents were required to pay a monthly bill for garbage collection that accompanies their electricity bill. The garbage collection fee was based upon the percentage of each electricity bill so that the garbage collection fee increases proportionately to electricity consumption.[9] Two years after the new system was imposed, Rashed writes in the Al-Ahram Weekly, "residents of the governorate have been voicing increasingly vociferous complaints that the companies are working well below full capacity. The streets are not as clean as they were during the first days of the privatisation. Both company workers, and garbage receptacles, appear to be increasingly thin on the ground."[48]
The Zabbaleen use donkey-pulled carts and pick-up trucks to transport the garbage that they collect from the residents of Cairo, transport the garbage to their homes in Mokattam Village, sort the garbage there, and then sell the sorted garbage to middlemen or create new materials from their recycled garbage. The living situation for the Zabbaleen is poor, especially since they live amongst the trash that they sort in their village and with the pigs to which they feed their organic waste. Nevertheless, the Zabbaleen have formed a strong and tight-knit community. However, their existence and way of life has come under threat after the Cairo municipal authorities’ decision in 2003 to award annual contracts of $50 million to three multinational garbage disposal companies.[8][9][10]
Marina of the Zabbaleen is a 2008 documentary film written and directed by Engi Wassef that examines the life of Marina, a 7-year-old Egyptian girl living in a Zabbaleen garbage-collecting village in Cairo. The film debuted at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival with sold-out screenings. The film piqued the interest of many movie goers with its poignant tagline, "Garbage and God are the only options: plight of Christians peasants in Cairo."
Another negative effect of the pig cull on the Zabbaleen was the loss of the economic value of the pigs themselves. According to Fahmi and Sutton, pigs are the main source of income for the Zabbaleen.[51] Before the cull, the Zabbaleen had collected 6,000 tons of MSW daily, of which 60 percent was organic waste which was consumed by the pigs.[51] Every six months, the Zabbaleen would take their pigs to traders, earning around 450LE (approximately 80 USD) per pig.[51] Although the Egyptian government made financial compensations for some of pigs slaughtered; compensations were not given to all of the Zabbaleen who lost pigs to the cull and those who received compensation received far less money compared to what they would have received from selling the pigs to traders. According to one Zabbaleen pig breeder, "The government paid me between LE 50 (US$ 10) and LE 250 (US$ 50) for each pig I lost, depending on its size, whilst meat processors would have given me as much as LE 1,000 (US$ 200)."[54] The pig cull also resulted in increased cases of malnutrition and anaemia in Zabbaleen children because prior to the cull, pork had been the only affordable source of animal protein for most of the Zabbaleen.[55]
After the sorting of materials is finished, the Zabbaleen sell the sorted materials, such as paper, tin, rags, plastic materials, cloth, etc.[42] The Zabbaleen sell these sorted materials to factories that then reuse these products, such as paper, in the creation of new material. According to Engi Wassef, the director of the documentary film, Marina of the Zabbaleen, PT plastic, which is the plastic used to make plastic bottles for water and other beverages, is one of the most highly sought out materials.[22] In the case of PT plastic, the Zabbaleen would even export this material to China. However, the simple re-sale of sorted materials is not the only activity that the Zabbaleen do in terms of re-using these materials. They also create new materials from the materials that they have sorted. For example, granulators are used to change regular opaque-colored plastic into small plastic pellets. From these plastic pellets, a variety of plastic product can then be made, including garbage bags and plastic hangers.[22] Handmade crafts are also made from rags and paper.[20] Thus, the Zabbaleen system is a multi-tier system that is not limited to the simple collection of waste but also encompasses the creation of new materials from found recyclables.
For several generations, the Zabbaleen supported themselves by collecting trash door-to-door from the residents of Cairo for nearly no charge. Notably, the Zabbaleen recycle up to 80 percent of the waste that they collect, whereas most Western garbage collecting companies can only recycle 20 to 25 percent of the waste that they collect.[6][7]
When first ordering the pig cull, the Egyptian government asserted that it was a precaution to forestall national fears of the imminent pandemic.[51] Later, after the pig cull, the government stated that its decision to order the pig cull was directly affected by the global breakout of H5N1 virus, more commonly known as bird flu, several years earlier and a fear that the two strains of viruses could possibly combine to form a more lethal virus.[52] Later, the Egyptian government openly stated that the pig cull was no longer just an act to prevent swine flu; rather, it was part of a plan to clean up the Zabbaleen and allow them to live in sanitary conditions. According to Sabir Abdel Aziz Galal, chief of the infectious disease department in the Ministry of agriculture, "We want them to live a better life. humanely treated; it's a very difficult life."[12] In contrast to the explanations officially given by the Egyptian government, many other observers, especially in the Western media, as well as the Zabbaleen themselves perceived a religious bias in the execution of the pig cull. In a New York Times article, Slackman asserted that, "The Zabbaleen are Christians. Egypt is a majority Muslim country. The Zabbaleen are convinced that the government wants to use the swine flu scare not to help improve their lives but to get pigs out of Egypt. Islam prohibits eating pork."[12] In another New York Times article, Audi writes, "Most of Egypt's pig farmers are Christians, and some accuse the government of using swine flu fears to punish them economically."[53] According to Rev. Samaan Ibrahim, a priest from a Zabbaleen neighborhood, "The bottom line is pigs are not welcome in Egypt."[12] In an article by the BBC, Fraser argues along a similar line, saying that the Coptic Christian minority were targeted by the government for a main source of their income, the rearing of pigs.[50] A similar opinion is voiced by Engi Wassef in her documentary, Marina of the Zabbaleen. Fahmi and Sutton echo a similar explanation: "The adverse effect of the slaughtering of the pigs on the Zabbaleen's livelihoods might be part of the ongoing gentrification of garbage city for land speculations and the taking over of their recycling economy by entrepreneurial businesses."[54]
There are seven main settlements, in which the Zabbaleen reside in the Greater Cairo Urban Region: Ein El Sira, Moatamdia, El Bargil, Tora, Ezbet el Nakhl, Helwan, and Mokattam.[20] Due to urban expansion, most of these 7 settlements have been moved by municipal authorities to more peripheral locations.[20] The number of Zabbaleen living in these areas total to about 60,000-70,000.[11] Of these settlements, Mokattam, also often known as Garbage City, east of Cairo, is the largest settlement, situated at the foot of Mokattam mountain, with approximately 20,000 inhabitants. The Zabbaleen Settlement of Mokattam was created as a result of a series of evictions from the Imbaba area located in the Giza governorate, notably when the Zabbaleen were given a four-day eviction notice from the governor of Giza in 1970.[20][28]
Many sources state that the Zabbaleen have created one of the most efficient recycling systems in the world, which recycles up to 80 percent of all the waste that they collect.[6][11][21] In contrast, most Western garbage collecting companies can only recycle about 20 to 25 percent of the waste that they collect.[11] According to Fahmi, 2005, "it was estimated that, in 1997, the Zabbaleen informally handled one-third of the garbage of Cairo’s 14 million people, mainly that from poorer districts," meaning that the Zabbaleen collected up to 3,000 tons of garbage every day.[7] The Zabbaleen are able to recycle up to 80 percent of the waste that they collect through their family-run micro-enterprises that generate jobs, including those for production of handmade crafts from rags and paper, and incomes from some 40,000 people.[20] In fact, according to Fahmi, "in the mid-1990s, nearly 700 Zabbaleen families owned collection enterprises, 200 owned and operated small- and medium-scale recycling enterprises, and 120 owned trading enterprises, in addition to maintenance workshops and community-based service businesses."[38] What is distinctive about the Zabbaleen from many other urban informal waste collecting-groups that scavenge trash for useful products is that the Zabbaleen invest heavily in their tools and know-how for recycling. These Zabbaleen micro-entrepreneurs have invested "an estimated 2.1 million Egyptian pounds (LE) (US $ 1⁄4 LE 6.19 -May 2004 rates) in trucks, plastic granulators, paper compactors, cloth grinders, aluminium smelters, and tin processors."[39] By investing in such infrastructure, the Zabbaleen continually upgraded and enhanced their methods of recycling plastic, paper, cardboard, glass, metal, and fabrics. Thus, the city of Cairo and its administration had been able to manage its solid waste at almost no cost to the municipal administration because of such efforts by the Zabbaleen.[38] Hence, the income that the Zabbaleen generate is mainly derived from their recycling and sorting activities, not from the minimal fees (LE 2-4) that they collect from residents.