‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.’ This saying could have been created for the Zabbaleen, the 'garbage people' who for a century have collected and recycled the trash in Cairo, Egypt. Director Mai Iskander talks to Suite101 about her award-winning documentary Garbage Dreams: Raised in the Trash Trade, which follows three teenage boys growing up in the world’s largest garbage ghetto.
Recycling has become a hot topic over the past few years, but for the Zabbaleen, a community of 60,000 mostly Coptic Christians, it is a way of life. Until recently Cairo, a megapolis of 18 million people, had no sanitation service. Instead, residents relied on the Zabbaleen to pick up and dispose of their trash, for which they received a minimal amount of money.
The 3,000 tons of trash the Zabbaleen collect daily is brought back their neighborhood on the outskirts of Cairo, the world’s largest ‘garbage village’ and its most effective recycling program. Where Western cities would boast of a 30% recycling rate, the Zabbaleen recycle 80% of all the trash they collect.
In 2005, Cairo contracted three foreign garbage disposal companies to pick up the city’s waste. The Zabbaleen were unable to compete with their resources, and have seen their livelihood gradually disappear.
Local Coming-of-Age Tale Has Global Recycling Message
Garbage Dreams is told through the eyes of three teenage boys: Osama, an impish 16-year-old who has trouble holding down a job; Adham, a bright 17-year-old with ambitions of making Egypt famous for its recycling; and Nabil, a shy 18-year-old who is trying to earn enough money so he can get married.
Without sentimentalizing or patronizing its young subjects, the documentary tells a touching local story about growing up and all the uncertainties that go with it, while also addressing pressing global issues such as garbage disposal and recycling.
The film is beautifully shot, capturing both the filth and color of this teeming city. It succeeds in inducing in viewers the same feeling of crushing despair that the Zabbaleen themselves must feel in the face of globalization, despite their brave attempts to modernize. However, the overriding emotion is one of optimism. This can largely be attributed to the boyish, perhaps naïve, enthusiasm of Osama, Adham and Nabil who dream of a better future and believe it awaits them.
Directorial Debut for Mai Iskander
Mai Iskander, an Egyptian-American filmmaker, first found out about the Zabbaleen when she attended a wedding in their neighborhood as a teenager. She returned in 2005 and volunteered at The Recycling School, a local educational center set up to teach children how to collect trash safely, read road signs and maps and to recycle.
One day, she took along her camera with the intention of making a short video to give the children as a gift. “I quickly saw potential for a story, but it was the teenagers who really drew me in,” she says. “In addition to the fact that their way of life and community was in jeopardy, these kids were also facing typical teenage concerns: fashion, pop music and their workout routine, and aspirations to be the coolest and most popular. I wanted to tell the story of globalization through the eyes of teenagers as they become young men and inherit the trade of their parents.”
Iskander has worked as a camera assistant on over a dozen features, including Men In Black and As Good As It Gets, as well as being a cinematographer for Albert Maysles. She says of her directorial debut, which took four years to film, that she was waiting for the right time and the right story to make her own movie. “Cairo was a place close to my heart, and looking back it seems natural that I would have found my story there. And the story of the Zabbaleen was of immediate interest to me because it was a story of hope with great characters in extraordinary circumstances.”
‘Garbage Dreams’ Winner of 23 Awards
Garbage Dreams’ homepage is literally bristling with the palm fronds of the 23 awards it has won so far. These include editing (Woodstock Film Festival) and cinematography awards ( Rhode Island International Film Festival), but the film has unsurprisingly also been garnering ‘green’ accolades for its environmental message. The documentary screened most recently at the Dutch Environmental Film Festival in Amsterdam, and was selected as the winner of the REEL Current Award by Al Gore, who said of it that it makes “a compelling case that modernization does not always equal progress.”
Details of future screenings of Garbage Dreams and ways to help the Zabbaleen can be found on the documentary's website.
Cecily Layzell - Cecily Layzell is a food and travel writer and founder of restaurant review site www.eat-amsterdam.com.
Join the Conversation