Garbage City: Part 2

The behavior of women is one of the most important aspects of Arab culture. In our wanderings about the city there are several things I have noted about the habits of the women.

Of all the noises on the street, women’s voices are seldom heard. One of my friends recounted a story where she was hushed for fear of her laugh being viewed as flirtation by a man in a separate room.

Arab women cover their hair and, to varying degrees, their bodies. They save their beauty for their husbands, they do not share it with every man who crosses their paths.

Respectable Arab women do not loiter about the streets and are never seen on the street alone. They are always with a female friend, a husband, a father, or their children.

Women hold the family honor in their fingers and they are to be protected.

Traditionally, only the men, boys and young children go out onto the streets with their carts and later, their trucks to gather garbage. Girls above the age of puberty were not allowed to go out in order not to put the family honor in jeopardy. Women had the job of manually sorting through the collected garbage for the recyclable items and then cleaning them.

To send a woman onto the street to collect garbage demonstrates an act of absolute desperation.

In 1988 a project was begun by the Association for the Protection of the Environment to teach women and girls to weave rugs and create patchwork items out of the recyclable rags. The “admissions test” included the following questions: have you ever gone to school? Do you still go out on the garbage route? Do you sort garbage manually? Is your father alive? And, do you still go out on the streets, on foot, with a sack, to forage for plastic in the big municipal bins? 

one of the girls working the weaving loom

 Women and girls who were accepted into the program were trained to work looms, to do patchwork quilting, and to create paper products from recycled paper. They were paid wages and given incentives like prizes, field trips and summer camps. During the summer camps things were taught like how to flush a toilet, washing hands before meal times, hair hygiene, and how to be on time for a meal. They were taught numbers and literacy as it pertained to their wages and the price lists of their products. 

one of the ladies creating recycled paper

 After graduation they are given the option to have a loom installed in their home. This was a risk that involved cleanliness inspections and developed critical thinking, analytic skills and problem solving. Older women and mothers were given an option to learn needlework in order to have something to do while at home with the children. 

Isn't this baby quilt precious?

It was a joy to walk through the Rug Weaving Center last weekend and see that basic needs are being met and that women and young girls who would other wise have no honorable source of income are given a chance to build a community and learn valuable life skills in a clean, pleasant environment. 

The girls with their rug-woven purses

 ~information taken from Mokattam Garbage Village by Laila R. Iskandar Kamel

 ~photos courtesy of Brian Hebert