“Employees see that [you are from Mansheyat Nasir], and they immediately send your CV to the bottom of the pile,” says Adham El Sharkawy, who is acting as my translator as I make my way around the neighborhood. Born and raised in Mansheyat Nasir, Sharkawy was featured in the PBS documentary Garbage Dreams, which follows three teens born into the trash trade. He then had the opportunity to spend two years in the United States doing intensive English courses before deciding to return home and look for work.
In recent years, many determined Zabbaleen individuals have found ways of fighting the social stigma they face in Cairo. Among them are a group of women who work with the Egyptian non-profit Association for the Protection of the Environment (APE), established in 1989 to help improve the lives of the garbage collectors through programs that provide education and jobs for the Zabbaleen community. The APE buys everything the women produce and sells it to customers worldwide; the profits are then reinvested into community projects in Mansheyat Nasir. In their shop of upcycled goods, I see how pull tabs have become handbags, interlinking to resemble fish scales; jewelry is made from Nescafé pods, reshaped into abstract flower shapes; bottles have been flattened into dishes that have the flowing forms of molten glass.
“I love taking trash and making new things that people from around the world might use,” a woman named Hayet Ejela tells me, as she crochets pull tabs together to form a handbag. Ejela is sitting at a table in one of the rooms of the sprawling APE headquarters, set in a large garden on the edge of Mansheyat Nasir. Around her are half a dozen women, each engrossed in a different crafting project, and their materials—scraps of fabric, newspapers, bottle caps—are sorted in sacks around the room.
The women chat and laugh, comparing their work and giving each other pointers. There is a sense of joy and pride in their work, and this same pride is increasingly visible throughout the community. I see it in the small gift shop that has opened on a narrow street, selling recycled handicrafts as souvenirs, and in the tours run by local people, who bring tourists to the neighborhood to show them how they live and work.
Sharkawy was the first to offer tours of the Mansheyat Nasir, starting as early as 2008, when he was still a teenager. After finishing his studies abroad, he wanted to move back to his neighborhood and work towards changing the image other Egyptians and foreigners had of it. He continues to run his tours and, since 2022, rents out an apartment in Mansheyat Nasir, the first tourist accommodation in the Garbage City.
“People from outside used to be afraid to come here,” Sharkawy says. “I wanted to show them how impressive it is.” On his guided tours, he shows visitors the different steps of the recycling process and takes them to meet the women in the APE workshops. “People here are friendly. They like to meet outsiders and show them how they work,” he says.
