Thursday, September 5, 2013

Mean Streets


This is a street in the "village" of Abu Sir. This "village" houses about forty thousand people. It has no mayor, no town council, no police, no sewage, no trash collection, no running water...among many other things that it lacks, like paved roads. This is rural Egypt, the place that the government never thinks about. 

4 comments:

William Kendall said...

And perhaps the sort of place where trouble can start from?

It seems desolate.

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani said...

Desolate isn't the word, but it is crowded, dirty and difficult. Most of Egypt's people actually live in "villages" like this. Some are informal neighbourhoods in cities, many are, by population, large towns and small cities in the rural areas. The government pretends that if they don't notice them, they will go away. Only the concerns of the cities are noted.

Star said...

How do they deal with issues like sanitation and water? Thanks for your blogs.

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani said...

I think in a word, badly. There are septic tanks and wells with electric pumps, but the water quality isn't good. Refuse is either dumped in a canal (bad idea because the canals can't handle the population density now) or recylers are trying to handle it but there aren't enough of them and they aren't really organised. Most of these places have a school that has overcrowded classrooms and maybe, if they are lucky, a pretty bad small hospital or clinic. As far as the government, which is very centralised, is concerned they almost don't exist.

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