In the documentary ”Garbage Dreams” the producer and director Mai Iskander portrays the lives of a few teenage boys who are part of the Zabbaleen community. A community where everyone knows each other and live similar lives. All the teenagers that are documented have the same future in mind, a future in garbage. The whole neighborhood is centered around this way of living and adapted to fit the Zabbaleen lifestyle. The community has it’s own recycling school, generations of families are living together in dense apartments, pigs and other livestocks are held for use of the organic waste and the streets are adapted to communal working spaces. This is all built up by the residents. Everybody works together and are helping each other with the knowledge of being in the same situation.18
The social life in the “Garbage City” is well developed.
18 Garbage Dreams [dvd]; Director Iskander, Mai; Cairo, Egypt; PBS; 2009. 19 http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2013/pigeon-party/
A Zabbaleen boy looking down on his neighborhood.19