"Garbage Dreams"

Last night, I attended a screening of a film called "Garbage Dreams", which follows the lives of three teenage boys living in an area of Cairo called Moqattam. Because it is home to over 60,000 Zaballeen (trash collectors) who earn their living by recycling up to 80% of the garbage collected throughout Cairo, Moqattam is also known as "Garbage City". (See this post for photos from my first trip to the neighborhood.)

The film was incredibly interesting, examining the challenges the Zaballeen face as their trade is affected by globalization, particularly by Cairo's move to privatize trash collection through a $50 million contract with three foreign companies. It was both heart-breaking and thought-provoking.

The film was shown at a great venue called Darb 1718, a contemporary art and culture center in an area of town near Coptic Cairo. According to its website, Darb 1718 focuses on “(1) exhibiting the works of largely unseen local artists alongside those of established regional and international artists who have rarely or never exhibited in Egypt, (2) providing local artists with opportunities for international exposure and cross-cultural exchanges, and (3) implementing developmental programs that include workshops, debates, films and other educational initiatives.”

The film was shown outside, projected against the side of a neighboring buildling. The crowd that had gathered to watch it sat in orange beanbag chairs on the small grass lawn and on the roof of the building. It was certainly not a typical Egyptian evening, except, perhaps, for the oppressive heat and crowded Metro trains!

Break from blogging

When I was back in the States in May, several people made comments about how much they enjoy keeping up with what I’m doing through this blog. Their comments reminded me that I should get back into the habit of writing and posting interesting stories, and I began to wonder what had led me to stop in the first place.

I noticed almost immediately that my blog posts trailed off right around the one-year anniversary of my time in Egypt. In that year, everything was so foreign and interesting – Islamic holidays, strange fruits and vegetables, trucks piled high with fifteen feet of God-knows-what wobbling down the highway, cases of H5N1 influenza, peaceful felucca rides on the Nile, even travels to nearby countries like Israel and Djibouti. Then everything was new. And strange. And fascinating. It was truly, as Paul Coelho writes, “an act of rebirth” in which “you confront completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and...you don’t even understand the language the people speak.”

However, over the course of the first nine months of my second year in Egypt, situations are no longer “completely new”. Many things that were once strange and unusual have become routine pieces of daily life. Sights that I would have once photographed immediately and situations about which I would have loved to write and analyze are hardly notable. Thus blogging has become less of a priority.

While part of me feels like this familiarity could mean that it’s time to move on to a new country, another part of me recognizes that there is still much to learn and experience here, and perhaps I just need to pay a bit more attention to the environment around me.

As much as I would like to promise that I’ll revert to my former habit of regular blogging, I don’t think I can make that promise, but I do recognize that many of these things that have become routine for me may still be interesting to some of you, so I will try to continue sharing the more interesting aspects of this southern girl’s life in the Middle East.