Where on earth would you find a Christian community making a living out of collecting smelly old rubbish – and one which has built a 20,000-seat church for itself out of almost solid rock?
The answer is Cairo, Egypt, and these real life Wombles are the Zabbaleen, or ‘garbage collectors’ in Arabic. They collect about 3,000 tonnes a day of the city’s waste and recycle about 80% of it – a dramatic improvement on most western cities, which barely reach 25%.
It is a remarkably efficient system. At night the Zabbaleen men pick up as much street rubbish as they can – cans, plastic bottles, cardboard, wood, rags, tins. They then take it back to their neighbourhood, packed tightly into large parcels, tied together with rope, precariously perched on the top of motorised bikes, carts or lorries. The rubbish is then deposited, separated and sorted. Food waste is fed to locally kept pigs, while cans and bottles are packed tightly together and sold to recycling companies, which are now starting to accept plastic waste too.
Yet the most astonishing feature of the district is the enormous church, carved out of a cave in a sheer rock face. But this community did not always function as smoothly as this. In the 1960s, alcoholism, crime and drug use were prevalent, as in many areas of extreme poverty across the world. Yet in the early 1970s, things began to change.
Farahat Ibrahim was a young Christian evangelist, part of a group working among Cairo’s poor. He told his local garbage collector of his faith in Jesus, and the man invited him back to meet his family. He then preached the gospel to the community and, increasingly, people responded. They prayed, learned to care for their neighbours, and the money that had gone on drugs and alcohol went elsewhere. They built, without any help from government or external agencies, a school, a hospital and a centre for people with disabilities. They constructed a church, which quickly became too small. So they developed natural caves as places of worship and the 20,000-seater church is now the biggest in the Middle East.
How can urban regeneration take place where crime, drug use and violence is so rife? The story of the Zabbaleen suggests that there is spiritual dimension to these problems and that a revival of the faith that Western culture has gradually been shedding for the past 100 years or so might in fact help transform challenging communities.
George Makeen is Ministry Content Adviser of SAT-7, the Christian TV network that broadcasts across the Middle East. He said: ‘The Zabbaleens are a remarkable people and the church is truly special. SAT-7 has worked with the church on several projects, including covering their recycling activities. We also used to broadcast live a weekly service from the church. In 2011, after some accidents where Christians lost their lives, we again broadcast live on SAT-7 ARABIC. Thousands attended, and there were fears that the crowds would protest, but the service was showing messages of faith and love to all. Several secular Egyptian TV channels and newspapers also covered the story. It is remarkable what God is doing in this community and how bold the people are in their faith. We continue to stand with them in prayer.’
