7/27/11, "Who'd be a dustman in Cairo? Revolting pictures of piled-up rubbish give Egyptian capital label of Garbage City," UK Daily Mail
"With mountains of rubbish towering over children and endless bin bags bulging from high-rise flats, these are the shocking images that show Cairo's 'Garbage City' - where thousands of Egyptians live amongst piles of stinking rubbish.
Manshiyat naser, or Garbage city, as it is known by locals, is a slum on the outskirts of Cairo, just a short drive away from luxury five star resorts.
But these shocking photos show a whole community which has been living in the slums for hundreds of years surrounded
- by rats and rotting rubbish.
Photographer Ilya Stepanov took the pictures to document the lives of the Zabbaleens - a people who have been living among rubbish,
- and making a living out of recycling it,
- for generations.
One image shows huge piles of bagged rubbish stacked high in the streets, with most of the piles twice the size of the helpless children stood nearby....
Ilya, from Cheboksary, Russia, said: 'The place stinks and there are myriads of flies.
- 'It is so hot, everything is rotting, and there is rubbish piled several floors high on every street.
'But the people there are happy. They have never known anything different than living among the rubbish. 'It's definitely not a place I'd like to stay for a long time - it was difficult to stay a couple of days to take the photographs.
'It often has no running water, sewage or electricity.
'But the people there are so friendly and welcoming - they don't see anything unusual about it.
'The Zabbaleens are Christians, and in Cairo, Muslims don't have much dealing with rubbish, which is why niche was taken by Zabbaleens. 'Besides many hundreds years ago they were not allowed to do
- anything else, only the most dirty jobs."...
via Drudge, photo Stepanov
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