A 'Festival of Cleanliness' for Egypt's Poor

By Laura Sheahen

"Best garbage parade ever" is not a thought that ordinarily floats through my head. But as I stood in a small Egyptian village called Garado, watching residents line the streets to hoist bags into a truck as children ran alongside it, I was sincere. Never before had I enjoyed trash so much.

Garado, like many villages in a region of Egypt called Fayoum, is desperately poor—so poor that, for years, there was little if any garbage pickup. Household trash would pile up in alleyways or be thrown into the canals where people also washed their clothes. Waste from chickens and donkeys would end up in the canals as well. The result, of course, was disease—which led to days too sick to work or attend school—which led to more poverty.

Though the villages had running water, they also lacked decent septic systems. The spongy ground—Fayoum is below sea level, and is one of the few areas in Egypt that does not lack water—would often cause buildings to sink into the earth, forcing families to live only in the second floor of their homes.

Adding to their troubles, villagers had little access to information about hygiene and safe child-care practices. Mothers would wash their babies' hair with gasoline, thinking it would make their hair prettier and longer. Or they would follow an old custom of using a feather to put kohl eyeliner around a newborn baby's eyes, so their eyes would appear bigger and cuter as a result. Tapeworm went unchecked to the point where 30-inch worms had to be surgically removed. Lice, worms and similar diseases were so common that at one point, blood tests showed that 80 percent of one village's children had parasites.

An Integrated Approach to a Complex Problem

Just addressing one of these problems wouldn't necessarily improve the situation. If villagers learned how to avoid parasites but had nowhere to throw their trash, the same cycles of disease would recur. An integrated approach was needed, one that would make it possible for villagers to live healthier lives.

Catholic Relief Services brought this approach to Fayoum when we started tackling six villages' sanitation problems. Advancing several goals simultaneously, the Fayoum project focused on trash removal, hygiene practices, sewage systems and environmental awareness.

To address the groundwater and sewage problems, CRS built new pump stations and septic systems, providing employment to local men. The agency also installed underground pipes and improved drainage so homes wouldn't keep sinking. To support the project and to promote buy-in from villagers, CRS collected a portion of each household's pipe-repair costs from families: about $75 per household. In some cases, more well-off villagers paid for neighbors who could not afford the fee.

To give villagers a better way to dispose of household garbage, CRS arranged for solid waste facilities to be built and for trash trucks to visit communities on a regular basis—all for a nominal fee of 40 cents per household per month, about the price of two loaves of bread. The CRS program created street signs encouraging residents not to throw garbage in canals or to burn their trash, which exacerbated both pollution and villagers' health problems.

Turning Trash Into Treasure

CRS also countered the trash-burning phenomenon on a larger scale. Fayoum-area farmers usually burn agricultural waste like husks and stalks, especially after rice harvests. The resulting smoke has been blamed, in part, for the infamous autumn "brown cloud" over Cairo, two hours away by car. Closer to home, the choking smoke added to the dust and dirt of the villages.

CRS created a composting facility and arranged ways for farmers' agricultural waste to be shipped there. We also taught farmers about the benefits of composting. Since the project started, no incidents of burning agricultural waste have been recorded. Better yet, the facility has been able to make money: To date, 1,300 tons of compost have been produced and 785 tons of it have been sold.

An important challenge was changing attitudes about health and hygiene. CRS trained local women to teach their peers about washing a baby, feeding kids the right foods, making sure children wash their hands, and treating diseases such as worms. During the classes, groups of 10 to 20 pregnant women and new mothers sat on the floor in houses or community centers, asking questions and studying visual aids like food charts. During one large health seminar, 180 attendees were tested for bilharzia, a snail-like internal parasite that can cause chronic disease. Six of them tested positive and now take medicine. Thanks to the health classes, cases of tapeworm have dropped substantially, and kids have fewer infections.

Trees of Life

Finally, CRS worked to improve environmental awareness in the six villages. The agency ran environmental camps for young people, campaigned against trash burning, and painted colorful wall murals about keeping houses and canals clean. It also countered dust and erosion by giving villagers trees to plant. For a fee of $1, any family who dug a hole outside its home and promised to look after a tree was given a leafy sapling—a welcome spot of green in the brown, formerly litter-strewn streets.

In Garado, the three-year, many-pronged program culminated in…a party. Call it a Festival of Cleanliness. As a trash truck moved through the village streets, the whole town came out to watch. Children laughed and ran alongside it. Along its route, banners and signs encouraged residents to throw trash away in the right way, and keep their village clean. Local CRS staff went house-to-house, choosing the winners of the Cleanest Home Contest (prizes included brand-new cleaning supplies like brooms). Women gathered for health classes, and families crowded together around their new trees. In one street, villagers held a neighborhood block party, bringing potluck meals. For the first time at such a party, men and women participated together.

I, for one, proudly clutched the No-Lice Doll I had been given as a present. The doll, named "Fulla" after an Egyptian flower that is a symbol of purity, is used in hygiene seminars to show how to keep children's hair clean. The doll's hair, like her yellow dress, was spotless.

"Best garbage parade ever," I thought again.

Laura Sheahen is CRS' regional information officer for Europe and the Middle East. She is based in Cairo.