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I'm reminding you that today is Thursday and at the end of the show we'll
show you a pretty side of Egypt,
but before we do that let's see another side of how beautiful Egypt is,
shown in a picture of a brave young lady that went down the streets of Egypt and decided to make a difference.
We picked up everything you can imagine.
Things a human being can't describe.
First of all that plastic bag is filled with cigarettes, papers, trash, rests of food, Pepsi bottles, glass…
Of course while cleaning, the people looked at us weirdly,
wondering what we're doing. Some people simply don't get the fact that this is really important.
Them, being young ladies didn't stop them from going down the streets to make a difference.
It's just their feeling of responsibility, patriotism and loyalty to every genuine Egyptian corner.
They are students that haven't even celebrated their 16th birthday. They're in the 10th grade in the German School in Cairo.
Instead of going on a leisure trip, they preferred to go down the streets of Cairo to clean them as good as possible.
These girls are from the high-class society, each one of them has a servant or two and a driver,
they're actually very well off. But they still feel the need of serving their country.
Not every garbage-man picks up all the trash on the streets. And a lot of people simply throw their garbage bags from their windows,
they don't care about the people walking on the street. They don't even care about Egypt's image in front of the tourists. All that trash isn't nice to be seen by foreigners.
Cairo has become very dirty. We picked up a lot of trash but still the streets look dirty. We try our best but still…
This happened in front of the official sent by the district, who did nothing except watch the girls working.
If we rate how clean the district of Abdeen is, I'd give it 10/10 or even 9/10.
I left that street intentionally for them, so they can make an effort and feel they did something
but they only picked up tree leaves. If you look closely they were picking up tree leaves.
We weren't only picking up tree leaves. That's what he sees.
But if he had wanted to take a better look, he was welcome to come with us and see himself what we were really picking up.
Whom should we blame? Who is responsible for that mess? The hygiene workers?
The district? Or the bad habits and traditions of the people?
I think they are trying hard to keep Cairo clean but they are not succeeding at raising awareness and instructing people about waste management and that's a problem.
Cleaning after people who don't know what to do with the garbage is also a problem, but if we succeed helping the society to understand what to do with all that waste, this could actually make a change.
This event took place downtown Cairo, and this district is considered one of the cleanest districts in Cairo due to the presence of a lot of ministries and
embassies and governmental centers. But I cannot imagine the faces of these young ladies when they face the truth...
Something so beautiful and heartbreaking but there's something that has to ruin the good mood,
the responsible of the Abdeen quarter, instead of encouraging them and letting them feel they're doing something great -as they are
doing something great, nobody asked them to do- he would frustrate them and say they were just picking up tree leaves, even if they were...
Translation: Farah Kahil, 10a DSB Cairo