One man's trash is another man's treasure!

During their 50-year monopoly of the Cairo garbage business, the zebaleen managed to save a bit of cash—local Muslims declare that although the barons may live in squalor, they are far from poor. Now, these shrewd old men are investing their hard-won savings into tuition and training for the next generation. Today’s zebaleen study law, economics, politics, foreign languages—anything but waste management. Their parents may have turned garbage into gold, but they hope to spin gold into a future without garbage

Quoted: "These children are the future of our area, the future of Egypt,” he says. “When I went to school there were seven of us who graduated and only one girl—now there are hundreds of kids and many of them are girls. Now families are willing to pay 15,000LE (about $2650) for a child to go to a private pharmacy school.”