New Videos

Here are a few videos we made relatively recently but haven't posted until now. At first, we were planning to save all our videos of construction work until the end, so it would be a surprise, but we've since decided that the surprise will be seeing a more unified video at our presentation at the College later this fall, which will show the entire process from start to finish.

In the meantime, here are the links to three new videos:

http://sharing.theflip.com/session/43f35bfdde2f8379142bfc069f139b6b/video/17408054

http://sharing.theflip.com/session/76a045a42f5815717381a0d6d0ce1f72/video/17408061

http://sharing.theflip.com/session/3d39fd84bf000bd96e3794844e41a424/video/17207613

I've realized I haven't grasped the enormity of the scale of our project until it's started to come

to a close. We've done so much reconstruction work the school has not been able to function as a school for over a month. Yesterday we bought a new projector. Today we are moving in fifty new chairs and two new tables, hand-crafted by a carpenter who owns a shop up the road across from the monastery. This week, essentially for the first time since we've been here, the school is being put back together again. This time, though, instead of looking like a decrepit warehouse it looks like a normal classroom in America--only better because it's so much less sterile, with colorful murals on all the walls. It has a freshly-tiled bathroom with a new sink, seven new ceiling fans, and new lighting throughout. Before we leave, we've contracted another carpenter to craft new doors for the entrance of the school. Hopefully the drastic nature of the changes will be readily identifiable from earlier videos compared to later videos, which we will contrast in our final presentation to the wider Caldwell-Boise community.

--Keats

Coming to a Close

When our countdown calendar to departure reached ten days, I was hit with strange combination of satisfaction and remorse.

The satisfaction is easier to explain. In our short time here, we have accomplished so much in the school that it is hard to fully realize the effect our work will have on the students and teachers. The crumbling walls have been transformed into solid structures that will sustain the building for a long time to come. The school has been brightened by paint and lighting, now matching illuminating ferocity with which the boys peruse their education. Ceilings fans have made the temperature in the school much more pleasant and facilitate the movement of air to carry away some smells from the bottles stored in back. A new sink has been installed with standard faucet, which is only too useful after sorting through some trash or making one of several pots of tea made in a day. Bathroom titles for the floors and walls made the bathroom more sufficient, hygienic and user friendly. A new door will soon be installed, providing the school with better safety and more functional use than the old wooden one it is set to replace. A projector has been purchased that will enhance the teaching tools available to staff. Computers are about to be purchased, whose usefulness for the school is invaluable. Combined, these things will make for a Recycling School that will truly meet the goals we set out in our project proposal, and leaving knowing that this has been accomplished fills me with the most sincere sense of satisfaction.

I struggled with the remorse I felt, wondering why having almost completed the project and being able to return home to family, friends, and the comfort American life would cause me grief. After some meditation on the discomfort that plagues me, I came to the following realization: in spite of having changed so much for the school, as I look around Egypt, I see so much more need. And, much to my surprise, the need is only partially for the community of Mokattam. Of course they have some negative correlations with lower incomes, like few hospitals and smaller apartments. But the need I see if for the world to know their story.

This realization came on the top of a hill overlooking all of Cairo. Like any city in the world, you see layers of buildings and streets, all of which you know are filled with constant commotion. However, here from this view, there was something different. In the picture, you can see so poignantly the same white mass of pollution that seems to haunt over the city. And this is what makes me sure that there is a need in Egypt for the Recycling School’s story to be told. The people we have been working with play an important role in the environment, recycling 80% of what they collect of the 13,000 tons of waste here everyday. This role they take with pride, contentment. However, their job is seen entirely differently by the rest of Egypt, and for the matter, much of the world.

The government of Egypt, according to the teachers at the school, wants to force them out of Mokattam. This may seem unrealistic, but considering the Egyptian Government contracted away their work to multinational corporations and forced the slaughter of their pigs, a necessary part of their waste management system, this true seems less than fictitious. And far from the government problems, the story of the zabbaleen is unknown by most locals, and if they did know, Egyptians seem not to care.

On a global scale, our project mentor Dr. Laila Iskandar notes, people see the plight of the zabbaleen and want to find ways to get the people out of this community. Instead of understanding the people’s determination to stay and continue their lives work, they see only their poverty and helplessness. This misunderstanding of the zabbaleen on a global scale needs to be corrected to show the world that in places across the globe, there are people who are dedicated to protecting the environment at lengths far greater than leaving then turning the lights off when you leave the house or recycling in your home.

I hope that over time, my remorse will subside into action, not apathy. I hope that at home, I do not forget the lessons I have learned here, and that I do not let compliance with “good enough” get the best of me.

--Casey

Project Update

For all our followers, we just wanted to give you a peak into our project. Although we are not going to post a video of the work until it is totally complete, we wanted to post a few stills of the construction that is going on at the Recycling School. These photos depict the first phase in our efforts to revamp the school, which include clearing out the school, chipping the paint of the brick walls, and applying a cement coat. This process is part of the larger picture of our project, which is to provide a facility that further enables the success of the work they are doing at the Recycling School.

We have been working hard alongside the contracted labor and have been involved in all negotiations (which is truly saying something for how Egyptians bargain)! Also, we have been shopping around to get everything else the school needs. An important aspect of all the work we have done thus far is that we are using the Davis Grant money to purchase all labor and materials in the community. This provides the benefit of pumping more money into the local economy and employing the hard working people of Garbage city. All of these things will be included in a later video, but for now, you will have to trust us that things are looking great.

Women's Association for Environmental Protection

After having worked with the boys of the Recycling School for the last few weeks, we finally got out into the community to learn about an opportunity offered to the women of Garbage City. We were given a tour of the Association for the Protection of Environment, a facility used to train women in a skill and provide them an education. The association taught two skills: cloth weaving and papermaking. Like the recycling school, the women are paid to come and create their profit from recycling waste.

The material used in weaving is all paid for and gathered from shops that have extra scraps for whatever reason. The women then separate these scraps into the different colors. They are taught to make rugs first and then go on to make bags, quilts and scarves. For papermaking, they use paper donated from all over Cairo, which they recycle to make a plethora of wonderful products. This process, seen in the video, is them wetting down the used paper, collecting it in rectangular frames and drying it out on wooden slabs. All of the products created here are sold in shops all over Egypt and a show room at the association.

While learning these skills is important, the woman in charge of the tour told us the school was originally founded focused around literacy. However, in order to get the women to come to the school instead of working to earn a wage, they incorporated the practical work aspect to motivate the women to come and commit to their education. It was great to see such innovative ways to empower women through work that is environmentally conscious.

http://sharing.theflip.com/session/ffc0a218322f1779f46a623b047e8b1b/video/16936782

--Casey

The Fish Gardens of Zamalek

Two days ago we took a taxi to the Fish Gardens on the island of Zamalek. The guidebook ranked it number four on the list of "fun things to do in Cairo with kids." What the guidebook didn't mention was that the fish were either catfish, koi fish, or bleached sickly carp-like fish, and that the rest of the exhibits were clouded water with empty conch shells, plastic alligators, or, my personal favorite, stuffed mangy seals with googley eyes that also resembled [roadkilled] Egyptian hairless cats.

The Fish Garden was 0.50 LEs for children, 1 LE for Egyptians, and 20 LEs for tourists. We agreed that it was worth it, though, if only for the colony of bats we discovered living in the upper darkness of the artificially constructed viewing caves. We stood and listened to the bats chuckling and warbling like squirrels for at least fifteen minutes.

A few of the cynical side comments you'll miss in the video due to the music: Keats: "I've seen better aquarium displays in the waiting room of my dentist's office." Casey, while video-ing walking onto one of the bridges: "Keep people watching in suspense...and...boom! No water!"

If you ever come to Egypt, you must go to the Fish Gardens.

--Keats

http://sharing.theflip.com/session/864bf92eb41af689b0c8a3836161238c/video/16890652

The Recycling Process

This follow up video documents the selling of the plastic that we helped prepare for recycling at the school. Once the boys have shredded enough shampoo bottles to fill the bags at the school, they load up a truck and head off to the weighing station. After weighing the trucks, they go to the factory that is buying the plastic from them. Adham was nice enough to ask the factory owners if we could have a look at the factory. Once inside, we saw another side of the process that really brought to fruition the cycle that trash goes through in Garbage City. http://sharing.theflip.com/session/9ac142da0a508c77741ec69500ac9043/video/16656691

In the video, you will see they start by cleaning the plastic. This is necessary because if you were to see the pieces of shampoo bottles before, you would notice a grimy filth covering it, which has to be removed before processing. After properly cleaned and dried out, they heat it and melt it down. This is done by the spinning machine with a flame, which then funnels the melted material into a larger system of machines. From here, the plastic material stretched and cooled down in the water. The whole thing ends with the cutting of the plastic into little beads. These are then put into bags, weighed, and sold to consumers of the material from various parts of the world.

The process is simple yet mesmerizing, as they have perfected the art of recycling, something the most advanced countries in the world can’t yet seem to make successful and profitable.

--Casey

Portrait of Mokhattam

Here is a compilation of excerpts from the journal I'm keeping while I'm here. Hopefully they'll give a decent image of the area we are working.

On first entering Mokhattam, the first thing you notice is that the paced road transitions to dirt. The ratio of cars to donkey carts shifts heavily in favor of the latter. The buildings are easily ten stories, all apartment-style--one window with no glass. There is garbage on the streets. Not litter--garbage. Six-foot high by ten-foot wide heaps of it, as though someone took one of the large commercial BFI bins and just emptied it right there on the side of the road. There are abundant stray cats and dogs, and, of course, there are the flies. Six-year-old boys walk with stacks of flattened cardboard boxes balanced on their backs.

Three green panels comprise the exterior of the Recycling School. Inside, crumbling brick has been painted over by the students. There is a tree with kids' names on the branches, a patch painted in a shaken kaleidoscope of white, black, yellow, and red, and behind the computer lab, a round blue world with dark green continents. Arabic-English posters of the animals, the clock, and human organs are stuck to the wall by stringy gobs of super glue.

Twenty-five boys--ages five through twenty-three--sit in blocky wood chairs around circle tables. There are children's books in Arabic, pencils and lined paper, and counting blocks--one block, tens block, hundreds block, thousand box.

It is the only school in Cairo to teach in the Montessori-style, and has received backlash from the government. What they learn must be relevant, directly applicable to their day-to-day experiences, and encourage entrepreneurship.

Dr. Laila finished her tour of the school and leaves us with Miss Laila, the principal of the school, who speaks only Arabic. The kids sit at their desks in open-toed sandals. One has a gauze bandage taped above his right eye. One is on crutches, his leg amputated midway between knee and hip.

I must confess my first instinct is to take one of the boys in my arms and run--anyone, the first one nearest me, the boy with the bandage on his forehead, who keeps pulling my arm and asking for another bouncy ball, his hair and eyes warm brown as agave nectar. It was exactly as Dr. Laila has predicted--I held the standard American view of poverty--to get them out! to get them out! I held the grave misunderstanding of poverty, ignorant, backward, and counterproductive. "People want to help them 'escape,'" she said. "At first glance, they all want to help the kids 'move up' in the world, move to an area with more development, more opportunities, a higher standard of living." But this logic is oversimplified. "Pick them up and move there where?" Laila said. "And then what? They don't want to be moved."

I didn't fully grasp Laila's philosophy until a few days into working with the school. Adham, a graduate of the school who is now working as a teacher and speaks English near-fluently, graciously volunteered to take us on a tour of the city on our way to bargaining with local carpenters to negotiate a fair price for the fifty new chairs and two new chairs to be crafted for the expanding school. There are six Coptic Christian churches in the city of Mokhatta, which has a population of 60,000 and over 750 shops. The churches are cut deep into the sandstone cliffs and stepped like colosseums. A few yards from the churches and carpenter's workshop is a cliff that overlooks the entire neighborhood. The tops of the houses are all unroofed. Instead, there are aviaries of pigeons, pens of goats, and, of course, heaps and heaps of trash, separated into various recyclables in most cases--cardboard boxes in one, plastic bottles, aluminum in another.

The city of Mokhattam is beautiful in a way I've never experienced before. When I try to describe it, the only phrases that come to mind are of seemingly ugly scenes--unlit cement stairways, the smell of molding cardboard, wooden "tin fruit" carts pulled through the dust roads by donkeys whose ribs could rake the ground like a zen garden. It is a foreign kind of beauty, and I would venture to say it's a beauty you have to learn the same way the still lives of Giorgio Morandi may at first take work to see the arresting compositions, the abstract realness.

--Keats