What does Zabbaleen refer to?
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The Zabbaleen ( ', ) is a word which literally means "garbage people" in Egyptian Arabic. The contemporary use of the word in Egyptian Arabic is to mean "garbage collectors". In cultural contexts, the word refers to teenagers and adults who have served as Cairo's informal garbage collectors since approximately the 1940s. The Zabbaleen (singular: ', ) are also known as Zarraba (singular: Zarrab), which means "pig-pen operators." The word ' came from the Egyptian Arabic word ' (, ) which means "garbage".
Zabbaleen
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In the 1930s and 40s, there was a second wave of migration. This new group, mostly landless peasants, is known as the Zabbaleen. The descendants of subsistence farmers, the Zabbaleen originate from the El Badari district in Asyut, a rural region in Upper Egypt, which is the southern part of Egypt. As farming ceased to be a viable way of life, the Zabbaleen faced economic hardships which prompted them to migrate to Cairo in search of work. Henceforth, the Wahiya collaborated with the Zabbaleen, who purchased waste from the Wahiya for use as fodder for pig farming. Initially, the Zabbaleen settled in the Imbaba district of the Giza governorate, but were given a four-day eviction notice from the governor of Giza in 1970. Thereafter, the Zabbaleen settled mainly in an abandoned quarry at the foot of the Mokattam hills, east of Cairo, which is under the jurisdiction of the Cairo Governorate. Although the governor of Cairo granted the Zabbaleen administrative permission to settle in the area, he did not issue a lease or legal tenure. Thus, because of their precarious situation, the Zabbaleen initially lived in makeshift settlements of tin huts, made mostly of barrels that the Zabbaleen found amongst the waste that they collected. This Zabbaleen community later emerged as the informal garbage collectors and recyclers of Cairo. The literal meaning of the word Zabbaleen is garbage-men (singular: Zabbal). The Zabbaleen are also known as Zarraba (singular: Zarrab), which means pig pen operators, because they raise pigs that eat the organic components of the waste that they collect.
Zabbaleen
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The initial and very integral step of sorting the trash is the responsibility of Zabbaleen community members who own pigs. The pigs are fed the organic waste. After the organic waste has been eaten by the pigs, the rest of the trash is sorted into different categories such, as PT plastic, paper, cans, etc. Thus, as Engi Wassef, the director of "Marina of the Zabbaleen" notes, "One of the reasons why Coptic Christians are given a kind of monopoly status on the garbage collection and sorting system is because the Muslim religion does not allow for breeding or eating or living near pigs. It's considered a dirty animal."
Zabbaleen
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There is a gender division of labor in the process of collecting and sorting the trash in the Zabbaleen system. Usually, it is the Zabbaleen men, sometimes accompanied by children, who go pick up the trash door-to-door from each household. This trash is completely unsorted because there is not a system of recycling at the source in Egypt. It is rare for girls to go to collect the trash and it stops almost entirely after girls reach the age 10. The means of transportation that the Zabbaleen use to transport the trash that they collect are donkey-pulled carts and pickup trucks. After the Zabbaleen pick up the trash, they take the trash back to their village, a trip that may take anywhere from between 10 minutes to an hour.
Zabbaleen
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The Zabbaleen use donkey-pulled carts and pick-up trucks to transport the garbage that they collect from the residents of Cairo, transport the garbage to their homes in Mokattam Village, sort the garbage there, and then sell the sorted garbage to middlemen or create new materials from their recycled garbage. The living situation for the Zabbaleen is poor, especially since they live amongst the trash that they sort in their village and with the pigs to which they feed their organic waste. Nevertheless, the Zabbaleen have formed a strong and tight-knit community. However, their existence and way of life has come under threat after the Cairo municipal authorities’ decision in 2003 to award annual contracts of $50 million to three multinational garbage disposal companies.
Zabbaleen
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Significantly, the foreign companies, despite the large value of their contracts, are only required to recycle 20 percent of the waste that they collect; the remaining 80 percent are placed into landfills. In contrast, the Zabbaleen recycle up to 80 percent of all the MSW that they collect. The foreign companies collected the trash from garbage bins placed at central collection points on the streets. However, many inhabitants of Cairo preferred the door-to-door garbage pick-up done by the Zabbaleen, especially because the bins were not plentifully located or located in inconvenient places. Thus, residents expressed their discontent with the new system, especially because they were being charged more for what seemed to be a more inconvenient system. Under the new system, residents were required to pay a monthly bill for garbage collection that accompanies their electricity bill. The garbage collection fee was based upon the percentage of each electricity bill so that the garbage collection fee increases proportionately to electricity consumption. Two years after the new system was imposed, Rashed writes in the Al-Ahram Weekly, "residents of the governorate have been voicing increasingly vociferous complaints that the companies are working well below full capacity. The streets are not as clean as they were during the first days of the privatisation. Both company workers, and garbage receptacles, appear to be increasingly thin on the ground."
Zabbaleen
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Although Mokattam village is relatively close to the center of Cairo, it is very inaccessible because it is situated on a plateau surrounded by the cliffs of the Mokattam hills on one side and by the Manshiet Nasser squatter settlement on the other side. Vehicular access to the Zabbaleen Mokattam is possible only through three entrances, two of which are accessible only by crossing through the crowded, narrow, and steep streets of Manshiet Nasser. Because of the high congestion and road traffic, conflicts between the residents of the Manshiet Nasser settlement and the Zabbaleen, who need to haul their donkey carts loaded with garbage through the streets of Manshiet Nasser have often broken out. Occasionally, these conflicts took on religious overtones, as the inhabitants of the Manshiet Nasser settlement are mostly Muslims, whereas the inhabitants of the Mokattam settlement are mostly Coptic Christians.
Zabbaleen
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The municipal authorities grew increasingly intolerant of the Zabbaleen's donkey carts, which, according to Assaad, were considered an eyesore and a traffic hazard by the government. This was precisely in the neighborhoods that were being more fully served given Cairo's narrow, winding streets that are not wide-enough for large garbage trucks. Regardless, in the early 1990s, according to Fahmi & Sutton, the garbage collectors had to comply with the municipality's requirements to use motorized trucks, rather than donkey carts, as the authorities introduced a system of mechanization to transport solid waste. Because the Zabbaleen were required to accommodate to these new requirements for a mechanized system without any government support, including technical, financial, or educational support, they resorted to the selling of small plots of land back in their ancestral villages, use of personal savings, or credit loans to acquire the necessary capital to purchase the trucks. According to Fahmi, within the EPC, the Wahiya conducted administration, marketed the company's services, collected the fees from tenants, and supervised service deliveries. On the other end, the Zabbaleen, "many of whom might otherwise have been homeless and without employment, collected and transported the waste." In more recent years, as the Zabbaleen became more involved in the work, some received a minimal fee from the Wahiya.
Zabbaleen
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The enzyme belongs to the group of oxidoreductases according to the EC classification and is dependent on FAD as cofactor, thus it was classified as an external flavoprotein monooxygenase (designated as type E). It forms a two-component system with a reductase (StyB, StyA2B). The reductase utilizes solely NADH to reduce the FAD, which is then transferred to the styrene monooxygenase (StyA, StyA1). Two types of that enzyme are described so far: StyA/StyB (designated E1), first described from "Pseudomonas" species, and StyA1/StyA2B (designated E2), first described from Actinobacteria. The E1-type is more abundant in nature and comprises a single monooxygenase (StyA) supported by a single reductase (StyB), whereas the E2-type has a major monooxygenase (StyA1) which is supported by fusion protein of a monooxygenase and reductase (StyA2B). The latter one is the source of reduced FAD for the monooxygenase subunits and has some side activity as a monooxygenase. So far all styrene monooxygenases perform enantioselective epoxidations of styrene and chemically analogous compounds, which makes them interesting for biotechnological applications.
Styrene monooxygenase
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ǂHaba (ǂHabá) is a variety of the Khoe languages spoken in Botswana. Traditionally included in the Gǁana dialect cluster, it appears to be closer to Naro. It is endangered, with most ǂHaba speaking Naro.
ǂHaba language