Zabbaleen: Cairo

Trash Collectors Dept: For decades, the Zabbaleen have been Cairo's unofficial trash collectors and have been subject to hard living conditions, according to CBC. Nearly eight generations of Zabbaleen have lived this way, harvesting garbage from Cairo's streets and businesses. Using donkey carts, and more recently pickup trucks, they transport mountains of refuse back to their communities in the hills to be sorted and eventually sold and cairo's largest Coptic Christian community, known as the Zabbaleen, fear worsening conditions under Egypt's new Islamist-led parliament. Coptic Christians make up 11 to 15 per cent of Egypt's population. Known in Arabic as 'the garbage collectors,' the Zabbaleen are one of the largest concentrations of Coptics in the country and have made a living collecting, sorting and re-selling recycled material collected from Cairo's trash for decades. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.