Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home

One of the garbage neighborhoods of Cairo, Egypt

I do have a special opportunity to tour Cairo on Saturday afternoon with Emad, from Mama Maggie’s. How it comes about is that while I’m in the Arab Contractor’s Hospital, my brother Gary is concerned about me, and shares his concern with others in West Michigan; one of the others being a friend, a successful businessman, a Christian, and a friend of Mama Maggie’s. It is his call to Mama Maggie’s that causes the flowers to be delivered, which turn into a ride to the hostel, and further, into this tour. Emad picks me up at the hotel and takes me first to a factory where boys are taught to make shoes, and girls, sweaters. The mission provides a skill and an education on the Bible. School isn’t available to these children, and the mission provides them with hope for salvation and hope for the future; as a gift, they give me a knitted scarf, which makes me feel guilty, as I bear them no gifts. All I did to get here was to get sick, which I don’t think warrants gifts. The next place we go is an orphanage for young girls, who are provided for their physical needs of food and shelter, but even more importantly, are given a loving, caring, Christian home.

We then go to an area of town where Emad knows I can get some things to take to Faith. Lorrie says that they can’t buy any food, and urges me to bring back protein. I know the best way to do this is in dried legumes and nuts, which is where Emad takes me. I end up with about twenty kilograms of beans, lentils, and nuts, knowing full well that Lorrie wants meat, but I can’t figure out how to carry meat back with me. After this brief interlude, we continue to one of the most fascinating parts, not only of Cairo, but of our tour of the world.

The Garbage. In Cairo, several neighborhoods exist where the economy is built on garbage. Literally. A neighborhood might be a quarter of a mile square or a mile square, with streets wide enough for two cars to pass in some spots, but mostly narrower, lined with three or four storey brick, multifamily, townhouses stained dark from years of fires or smog or cooking fumes with garbage and children and donkeys and men and women and trucks and cars and bicycles and animals and noise and an overpowering stench. The neighborhood is populated by families consisting of a dad, a mom, a bunch of children, and a donkey. The way it’s presented to me is that if they occupy a two room flat, dad, mom, and the kids get one room and the donkey, the prized possession, gets the other. The economy works because of the donkey, and the reason the donkey is so important is that during the night, dad will harness it to a cart and take it into the city where garbage is waiting for removal, load it up, take it home, and dump it into any area available up to and including the stoop of his townhouse. During the day, mom and the children who are able, mostly barefooted and under clothed (note the shoes and sweaters earlier), will sort the garbage into donkey fodder, saleable plastic, saleable metals, saleable paper, saleable glass, and whatever else they can salvage. These items, except for the donkey fodder, are baled and shipped to purchasers, and this is life in the garbage of Cairo.

School is not part of that life. On first appearance, it’s an illustration of how far Cairo has to go to implement a solid waste plan; but if they do, hundreds of thousands of people will be left without livelihood. Sometimes I think it’s easy to look at places and know in my superior western mind how to fix things. The garbage only serves to reinforce how dumb my superior western mind really is.

Mama Maggie’s also provides medical clinics in the garbage areas. They treat many needs, but the most common are foot infections and viruses from the garbage.

Returning to the hotel, the odor is etched on my body, in my nose, my hair, my clothes; but the scene is etched in my being. Jesus talks about ministering to people, in their homes and in their livelihoods. Mama Maggie’s meets them here.