We had a really good turnout for our showing which I expected to be very small. About 50 people came! I showed the film as a conjunction between GCSU's Environmental Science Club and our school's Human Right's Symposium. The GCSU ENVSC Club has been working for several years to get recycling on campus (and we might have accomplished the feat this year!) and this film really showed it's audience what recycling really means. A friend and I talked afterward about how the Zaballeen see trash as "a gift from god," meant to be reused and turned into something new and how that sentiment is so foreign us here in the USA. We marveled over how efficient the Zaballeen were with their antiquated technology- and how hard they worked. It really made me think about how much we throw away and see as filthy, when really, so much can be reused.
Probably the most exciting thing that happened at the viewing is that about a week before the showing, I had a student from Southern Polytechnic University contact me to see if she could come to the viewing. This student, Sarah Eskander, told me that she was from Egypt and that she had visited the Zaballeen before and had been waiting for an opportunity to view the screening somewhere in the South. She and several friends drove down to Milledgeville and we were able to have a nice dinner before the screening. I learned over dinner that Sarah and her friends were architects at Southern Poly and that her thesis was to help the Zaballeen improve and modernize their infrastructure without damaging their sense of culture so that they can legitimately compete with the modern companies who threaten their jobs. I was so excited to have someone so connected to the Zaballeen come to our showing! I asked Sarah to talk to our group at the showing and she told us that she visits the Zaballeen every summer and that she has been to the church where Osama was an alter boy for awhile. She explained to us why the Zaballeen live where they do and how they found the church under the cliff. She told us that since the film, the foreign companies have been kicked out because the people of Cairo didn't like their ways and they wanted the Zaballeen back. However, Cairo apparently swings back and forth between the Zaballeen and the modern foreign companies quite often. It is Sarah's dream to help the Zaballeen modernize enough so that they can compete with the modern companies and hopefully, live more sanitarily.
I was so fortunate to have Sarah come to the screening because I think she added a level of reality to the situation that I don't think my audience would have had otherwise.
This was a beautiful and moving film. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to show it!