Trash/Garbage City ~ Cairo, Egypt

Here are some pictures of the Garbage/Trash City.
Below is the church. The story about this city is at the very bottom!

Below are pictures of the church that was built.

There are beautiful carvings in the rock ALL around

the church.

THE STORY:

Cairo is a big city, like many other cities around the world. From the 17 million residents living there, 13,000 tons of trash is produced; so what happens is there are over 7,000 people who take their carts all around Cairo and pick up the trash every day. Then they bring their carts full of trash to the outskirts of Cairo to a city, where they drop it off wherever they want. There is so much trash, it covers and fills buildings, it fills the streets, people sleep in the trash and build things from it. Women and children spend the day sorting the trash and separating the plastics, metal, and paper, then transferring them into large bays and taking them to recycling rooms. In the beginning, people didn’t even really have chairs. They sat on cardboard. There was no water, no electricity, and you can’t even imagine the smell – the stench of trash and dead animals filling the air. Despite the smell, people are eager to work and turn the trash into useful items. They sort the organic trash from the inorganic first, and the organic is used to feed the livestock. Some of the things you would see there would make you cry; very young children playing, sleeping in the trash.

30 years ago, a Coptic priest named Father Samaan came to garbage city. He walked around the poor and rejected people, and he saw a people in need of the grace of Jesus – no different than anyone else.

At first, when he walked around, people would run and hide in the pig stalls. These are people that come from a culture where pigs are the most wretched, filthy creatures. Father Samaan would go into the pig stalls after them, into knee deep mud and waste, pulling people to their feet and telling them about Jesus Slowly, lives began to change as Jesus’ teaching became truth in people’s lives.

As the number of Christians in Trash City began to grow, they started to pray for a church – but there was no room. In 1995, a huge part of the mountain they’re on fell in to reveal a cave. When Father Samaan saw it, he knew his prayers were answered. The rubble was cleared away, and a huge church was built in that place; today, this church seats over 20,000 people.

Jesus came to those who needed hope, in their time of despair, offering eternal life. Now many Christians take their carts out around Cairo – and they are no longer trash collectors, but evangelists, a light to the city, and precious children of God. And God is using them to bless Egypt. That is the story of Trash City.