Cave Church and the Garbage City:
"Spread out among seven different settlements scattered in the Greater Cairo Urban Region, the Zabbaleen population is between 50,000 and 70,000. The largest settlement is Mokattam village, nicknamed "Garbage City," located at the foot of the Mokattam Mountains, next to Manshiyat Naser. The Zabbaleen community in Mokattam Village has a population of around 20,000 to 30,000, over 90 percent of which are poor Coptic Christians living in slums. Being Cairo's largest concentration of Zabbaleen garbage collectors, its economy revolves around the collection and recycling of the city's garbage." The local Coptic church in Mokattam Village was established in 1975. After the establishment of the church, the Zabbaleen felt more secure in their location and only then began to use more permanent building materials, such as stone and bricks, for their homes. Given their previous experience of eviction from Giza in 1970, the Zabbaleen had lived in temporary tin huts up till that point." "The Monastery of St. Simon the Tanner is the largest and it has an amphitheater with a seating capacity of 20,000. This church is the largest church in the Middle East and the largest religious building in Egypt." (Source: Wikipedia: Zabbaleen)
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. In contrast, most Western garbage collecting companies can only recycle about 20 to 25 percent of the waste that they collect. 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. (Source: Wikipedia: Zabbaleen)
Below are my singles from the rest of my travel in Egypt
