Cairo’s streets are now littered with trash after the president of Egypt ordered every pig in the nation to be killed in an attempt to combat swine flu, according to The New York Times.
The pigs used to eat tons of the organic waste, but now rotting piles of food are piling up in middle-class and poor neighborhoods.
For more than half a century, a community of Egyptian Christians called the zabaleen collected the city’s trash, sold the recyclables and fed the organic waste to their pigs, according to the Times. After the government killed the pigs, the zabaleen stopped taking care of the organic waste. Instead, they pile it beside trash bins they have scattered around the city to keep up with the trash or dump it wherever they can.
In another response to the potential swine flu outbreak, the government announced schools would not open until the first week of October. The government’s strategy for keeping school children safe also includes reducing class sizes from 60 students to 30 students and having school only three days a week.
-LINDSEY ANDERSON
