Imagine what the Dandora dumpsite would look like if it were turned into a picturesque garden.
This is possible and the Azhar Park and Garden in Cairo, Egypt, is a good example of how a garbage mound can bring many economic benefits to the community. The garden is a site to behold right at the heart of a dusty, sandy and highly populated metropolis.
As recently as 1999, the site where the garden stands was a 3000-square metre expanse of garbage dump since the 15th century. The dump was 30 metres high, an open, toxic space in the heart of a poor, highly populated neighbourhood just outside the perimeter fence of the old city of Cairo.
An international conference recommended the creation of an open, public green space to change the face of the city and to provide a place for relaxation. Today, the garden is a little paradise in the same poor neighbourhood, full of indigenous desert trees such a palms
and citrus. Like the Dandora dumping site, the intrigues of city garbage heaps are the same.
There were homeless and nameless people who would not let go of the dumpsite and claimed it as part of their life and livelihood. Then there are garbage collection companies and drug and other illicit traders who found comfort in the large stretch of no man’s land. And naturally, there was the problem of toxins, which had lain in the ground for centuries.
Looking at the garden today, one cannot sense the conflict in public interest that first met the idea of establishing it. The most powerful weapon the developers of the garden used was to seek the support, workmanship and ideas of the local communities.
Young men were employed as tree nursery attendants, long before the first spade of garbage was removed from the dump. Older men with ncient masonry techniques were called upon to offer building restoration services.
This aroused the interest and support of the community. The drug ealers vanished for they had only existed because the community had no value for the garbage dump and had turned a blind eye to the goings on.
Once the plans were ready, the community was given information on the facilities that included open spaces, children’s parks and restaurants. In the plans were statistics of job opportunities that
would benefit the youth and business options for the more able members of the community.
The city fathers were bought by the statistics. City hall provided a letter and more hygienic rubbish den for Cairo. The interest of the society and the government became the will and force that propelled development of the garden with funding from the Aga Khan Foundation for Culture.
There is thus hope for the Dandora dumping site. The business possibilities in garbage collection and recycling are enormous and this would provide employment for the well and less educated, not to mention the environmental benefits for the inhabitants of Dandora.
City Hall should go back to the drawing board and give Dandora a new face and name and in the process make the garbage mounds benefit the community that surrounds the dumpsite.
Ismailimail 