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Garbage is the economic engine of Cairo's Manshayet Nasser neighborhood, also known as "Garbage City." This is the home of the Zabaleen – the city's community of traditional garbage collectors. The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, the Outreach Center at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Semitic Museum present film clips and conversation, "Garbage City and the Informal Economy." This free event will be followed by a public reception.
Cairo produces 15,000 tons of garbage daily, and much of it is collected, taken home, sorted, and recycled by the Zabaleen, who also keep pigs to consume organic waste. In recent years, the Zabaleen way of life has been threatened by the Egyptian government’s plans to employ large corporations to pick up the garbage as well as a mass slaughter of the Zabaleen’s pigs.
The documentary Zabaleen captures life in the neighborhood with garbage collector Mourad and his family. Three of the filmmakers (Justin Kramer, director, Lauren McCarthy and Carrie Vermillion, producers) will join the head of a global waste pickers network Lucia Fernandez, (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing) to screen clips from Zabaleen and discuss the informal economy of trash recycling with the Peabody Museum's associate curator of visual anthropology Ilisa Barbash.
The event is part of the Peabody Museum's continuing series Trash Talk: The Anthropology of Waste. April features three more Trash Talk events: a lecture about disaster clean-up and several family events. See the Calendar of Events for more.
Contact: Anna Mudd
Sponsor(s): The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, the Outreach Center at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Semitic Museum