Zabella

A community of Egyptians Christians known as the Zabaleen ('zabella' is the Arabic word for 'rubbish') used to remove all the rubbish from the streets. They let pigs eat the organic waste and then sell the recyclable stuff. Now though, with no pigs to take care of the smelly stuff, they aren't interested. Why are there no pigs? Well, the Egyptian government, in their infinite wisdom, decided to cull all 200,000 of them over the summer to prevent swine-flu.

Did it stop swine-flu? No.

Are the streets now left to the official cleaners who adopt the technique of lazily brushing their brooms back and forth across the dusty Cairo roads, without actually cleaning up any garbage in the process? Yes.

Well done the Egyptian government. Perhaps if you were to be informed that swine-flu is in fact spread by humans, you could start doing something about the rather large population of Cairo.

On a lighter not, here's a wee video.



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Oh my god, I can't believe it. It's my 666th blip today. I might cry. Thanks so much to everyone. Especially the Devil.