My family and I were trying to decide where to take my mother-in-law during her last 3 days here in Egypt. We had started with a pretty ambitious list of site-seeing when she had first arrived. As the days marched on, we found that we needed to prioritize in order to create a more realistic list. Our time was (let me dramatize) slipping through our fingers like the sands around the majestic and wondrous pyramids (which they saw yesterday so check that off the list).
Our choices for that day were Garbage City or City Stars. Now, what's comical about the two choices is that we couldn't have chosen more opposite attractions to see in Cairo. Garbage city is, as its name implies, the dump of Cairo. This is were all the trash collectors bring the thousands of tons of collected waste that the city produces everyday. Everything is sorted and separated. The people living there pull out anything that can be recycled or, as the new catch phrase says, "re-purposed". The people that do the sorting are not the poorest of the poor, but they do live on and in the trash. "What's to see in Garbage City?" you may ask. If you are able to make it through the piles of garbage and the smell, up in the cliffs just outside of Garbage City are beautiful churches lovingly carved out of natural caves. It isn't hard to get there by taxi, but good luck finding a taxi to take you out.
City Stars on the other hand is the posh mall of Cairo. It is here where the royalty shop when in town. It is the most spectacular mall I have seen in my whole life. It offers anything you would like to buy for 3 times the price you would pay in America. And the western restaurant food choices, I'm not just talking about McDonald's, I am talking about the Macaroni Grill and the Rain Forest Cafe.
Well, sad to say, City Stars won out over Garbage City (Actually, I wasn't too sad, because it had been my vote all along). We packed a lunch to help save a buck (or pound) and decided that we would splurge on dessert at the Rain Forest Cafe. To get there from our place you must drive through the city. Part of this drive is past the City of the Dead (tombs were people actually live among) as well as the outer edge of Garbage City. People were everywhere buying vegetables and fruit among trash piles. The open air markets, made out of cardboard and plywood, seemed as old as the Citadel that was built sometime between 1176 and 1183 AD. As we sped by it all, life thrived among the trash and the dead.
Arriving at our destination, and after a bit of haggling with our taxi driver, we were very happy to go through the metal detector and x-ray machine to enter City Stars. The contrast was amazing. Brand-spankin' new stores from Europe and America had mannequins in the window dressed in the finest fabrics I had seen in 6 months . There was not a piece of trash in site and everything sparkled. The one thing I found missing were the people. It was a beautiful empty shell. In fact, I was told that the Rain Forest Cafe, that we were actually looking forward to visiting, had shut it's doors forever due to the lack of customers.
As we drove home, with the sun setting to our right, I couldn't help but ponder the contrast of these two places. I did have fun window shopping and we saw a "discount" showing of a movie, but to be honest, the whole experience left me with a bit of culture shock.
WOW - that sounds so interesting!! I think I'd want to go to the mall, too - but how depressing that it is so expensive and empty. I would also love to see those churches in the hills, too, but don't know if I would be able to handle that smell. I would be in culture shock too. What an amazing experience though!
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