101 Places Not to See Before You Die - Catherine Price [39]
Garbage City
Garbage City is a reeking slum on the outskirts of Cairo that’s covered, literally, in trash. There’s trash in the streets; there’s trash in the houses. People live in it, work in it, and sometimes even sleep in it. And every day, there’s more. In fact, residents go out of their way to bring it home. Carried in by donkey in huge sacks, the trash, ironically, is what helps the neighborhood survive.
The slum’s residents are the Zabbaleen, the garbage people. Together with their pigs, which until recently ran freely through the streets gorging themselves on trash, the Zabbaleen used to take away about half of the sixty-five hundred tons of refuse the city produces each day. After separating valuable garbage like plastic, metal, and glass, the Zabbaleen fed anything organic to their pigs, which were not just garbage disposals, but an important source of meat—the Zabbaleen are Coptic Christians, and unlike the Muslim majority, they eat pork.
I say “used to” because in the spring of 2009, the government ordered the killing of all of Cairo’s pigs. Supposedly this was to prevent swine flu (a strange claim, given that no pig has been shown to carry it), but the Zabbaleen think it was a political move.
Regardless of the reason, the results have been disastrous. The Zabbaleen, down a major source of food, have stopped taking away most of Cairo’s waste. With no effective way to replace them, streets are piled with stinking heaps of trash, and the government is struggling to compensate for a system that it itself destroyed. In the meantime, the term “garbage city” applies to all of Cairo.
Chapter 59
Stonehenge
Built in several stages between 3000 and 1600 B.C., Stonehenge is one of the mysteries of the ancient world. Was it a temple? An astrological observatory? A burial site? No one’s really sure.
What we do know: its stones each weigh more than fifty tons, and some of them came from as far as 240 miles away. All this was accomplished in days when a shovel made from a cow’s shoulder blade was cutting-edge technology. So whatever Stonehenge was for must have been pretty damn important.
Unfortunately, Stonehenge no longer commands the same level of respect. Tucked into what is now the Wiltshire countryside, it’s cut off from its surrounding fields by a chain-link fence. A large parking lot sits nearby with a gift shop, ice-cream vendors, Port-O-Potties, and a subterranean visitors’ center. Worst, the A344 highway passes so close that some people save money on the admission price by just looking at it from the road.
Consider following their lead. Thanks to previous problems with vandalism, visitors are no longer permitted to actually approach the stones. Instead an entrance fee of more than $10 only allows you to walk around the periphery of the circle, kept at a safe distance by a wire guardrail. (The main benefit of this experience, as compared to viewing it from the road, is that it allows you to take photographs of Stonehenge with the highway in the background.) Up close, you’ll find that the stones are not nearly as large as postcards make them seem, and whatever spiritual experience you may have hoped for is likely to be destroyed by busloads of tourists walking in dazed circles as they listen to the audio tour.
If you insist on visiting, pay the extra money and sign up for a before- or after-hours private access tour, which will let you get as close to the stones as you want. Or, alternatively, plan a visit in June—perhaps in keeping with its original purpose, Stonehenge hosts a great party for the summer solstice.
Dominic Righini-Brand
Chapter 60
The Khewra Salt Mines Mosque
Speaking of Stonehenge, does anyone remember the scene in This Is Spinal Tap where the band commissions a full-size model of Stonehenge for the set of an upcoming show, but, thanks to a mislabeled diagram, ends up with one that’s eighteen inches high? (It’s lowered onto the stage and then attacked by dancing elves. Anyone?)
That’s what the mosque at Pakistan’s Khewra Salt Mines reminds me of.
This is not a criticism