A whole legion of street sweepers in neon yellow waistcoats are working day and night to clean up the plastic rubbish flying around Dahab. With a 200% increase in the cost of living within five years and prepaid electricity cards, Egypt truly has enough other problems to worry about at the moment.
But Egypt’s superheroes are sweeping up dust and plastic. On the edge of the windy Sinai desert. It is infinitely bizarre. On a morning MTB tour, I search in vain for comparable superheroism on the sea. Nobody mops up the water there.
Dahab 24/25
Dahab’s street sweepers are the only true superheroes. Their deeds are undoubtedly good. But completely pointless. Almost like the Green Dot in Germany. In Dahab, every little purchase goes into plastic bags. Even the plastic water bottles. There are hardly any glass bottles, with the exception of beer bottles. Most of them end up smashed on the street. No bicycle tyre here has fewer than 15 patches. Disposing of rubbish is so much sadder than avoiding rubbish.
The young Egyptians see all this. I’m not at all angry with them for seeing enough other problems but not doing anything about them. Do nothing? Food is ordered free of charge. In loads of plastic. Barbecue on the beach? Styrofoam is so practical! Coffee comes either in an instant sachet or a plastic cup. Preferably in both. The tea glasses stay on the shelf. If you explicitly ask for them, you always get funny looks. It’s like “Don’t look up”: with eyes wide open, we see the shit flying towards us. We smile. And open our mouths.
That’s not bashing. More like self-accusation, because without us travellers there would be less work in Dahab. So fewer people and less rubbish. Not travelling would certainly be a sadder life. But unfortunately not a solution either. Because if I compare the German standard of living with the Egyptian standard of living, 40 years of the “green dot” at home becomes the ultimate indictment of poverty.
We Germans recycle just 38% of our collected plastic waste at huge expense. 1/3 of all plastic waste worldwide ends up in the environment. German plastic waste doubled from 1995 to 2023. I simply call our 61% “thermal recycling” “burnt fraud”. Here in Dahab, the big hotels separate the rubbish. But at least everyone seems to know that everything is burnt together in the open air in the nearby desert. Dirty, but honest is somehow much better to me than “clean lying” like in Germany.
The sun rises over the Gulf of Aqaba. I get on my mountain bike and head south past dozens of “Throw your trash in the bin” signs on the beach promenade towards Wadi Gnai. A Turkish coffee on the beach. Again the funny look of “Huh, in a glass?”. Sorry. That and a wooden toothbrush and soap instead of shower gel are drops in the ocean of saving the world. At least as long as DM still has any soap in its range.
The young digital people are already hacking into their sandblasted laptops at sunrise. A dog sniffs me and is startled when the wind blows a plastic bag into its snout. My laughter irritates the neighbours. Onto the mountain bike, further south. Wadi Gnai is just 14 kilometres south of Dahab. But it’s a tough one.
On a long ascent outside the town, large groups of feral dogs attack me several times. I like dogs and they like me. We always understand each other immediately. But these dogs here are straight out of Resident Evil: ravenous fighting dogs, a dozen of which I could easily take down a mountain biker. Riding is no longer really advisable here. I dismount and walk on slowly, shouting “ho ho ho”.
In Ecuador, a mutt of this class once bit me on the foot. The subsequent infection required ten days of antibiotics. As much as I like dogs, I made a decision: no dog will ever bite me again.
During the second attack by an even larger group of mongrels today, I already have the only available weapon of mass destruction ready to hand on my handlebars: a palm frond. A palm frond? Sinai is the land from the Bible, isn’t it? I jump off and shout at the ringleader: “If you grab me just once, this palm frond will slowly and cruelly fillet you and send you to the afterlife!”. Unfortunately, he doesn’t speak German. Nor does he speak English. Only after the third speech do the fighting dogs stay behind.
Right at the entrance to Wadi Gnai, the sand and fine gravel get really deep. I push my high-geared China carbon MTB the last two kilometres into the canyon. A group of riders comes towards me. Apart from two quad bike convoys, I am the only other visitor. Bedouins serve tea in a small oasis.
Wadi Gnai is home to the only “real” greenery in the area. At nine o’clock in the morning, the sun is already beating down fiercely at over 30 degrees. The last few hundred metres into the canyon make me infinitely sad. This place was once sacred to the Bedouins. Today it is a rubbish tip full of plastic bottles and cigarette butts. Even the well-intentioned signs do nothing to change this. Man simply destroys everything. Mad Max in Egypt. Beach Cleaning here and rubbish diving there is good. But when will we finally learn to really use less plastic?
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.