Talking Pyramids

Visitors to the pyramids are often surprised to find that a renown world heritage site such as Giza plateau, home to the Great Pyramid, has no bins and no toilets. As a result many tourists, and even workers employed at the plateau have to find alternative places to go to the toilet and nasty surprises can often be found just out of the public eye. Plastic bottles litter the area along with other rubbish and little seems to be done about this ongoing problem.

Now, one man has taken it upon himself to turn this around:

With little more than a supply of black garbage bags and a pair of sturdy gloves, Hendersonville resident Bruce Benson recently spent 40 days in Giza, Egypt, picking up trash around the Great Pyramids.

No one asked him to go. Nor was he paid to perform the arduous work of filling bag after bag with discarded plastic bottles, candy wrappers, and other debris around the Sphinx and ancient tombs on the Giza Plateau.

“I’m impressed that he would go around and pick up trash without being intimidated by what people might say,” says Dick vant Hoff, a Hendersonville friend of Benson’s. “I’m impressed that he had the guts to do such a thing — for following his heart.”

From Feb. 2 to March 20, Benson stayed at a modest hotel within walking distance to the Pyramids. The self-appointed trash man spent a good eight hours a day making a circuit around the ancient site — picking up trash and sometimes even human waste — using only his gloved hands as tools.

“It may be the least prestigious job,” he says. “I was going for that.”

Full story: Local man picks up trash at Pyramids

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Tags: Giza