There is no official count of the number of bin ladies in the Kingdom, but it doesn’t take much to realize that they number in the tens of thousands. During the daylight hours in Jeddah, they can be seen virtually everywhere. They go about their daily business, moving from bin to bin, and from district to district looking for cans, cartons and other items in the dumpsters. With a stick used for poking into the rubbish, they risk tetanus and go head to head with the street cats as they rummage through the bins, looking through what most people would call ‘trash’. To them, however, your ‘trash’ is their treasure. At one riyal for every five kilos of cardboard and one riyal for every two kilos of aluminum, these women aren’t exactly living the highlife, but as one of them told Arab News, “this is the best place on earth.”
Most of them come to the Kingdom from African countries with family in tow; they come to perform Haj and simply never go home. They sell their papers on the black market to raise some cash and then look for a place to call home. For them, home is usually a single room, shared with two or three other families in the most dilapidated and crime-ridden areas of Jeddah. In some cases, there are as many as 12 people living in a single bedroom.
Arab News came across Fola, a 47-year-old woman from Niger. Accompanying her was her daughter, Ifeoma, 15. Arab News met them as they walked past the BMW showroom near Tahlia Street. When we first approached them, they were somewhat guarded and suspicious. After all, they are used to being left alone. Not speaking much English or Arabic, Fola managed to tell us that she had arrived in Jeddah 10 years ago to perform Haj. She came here with her husband and daughter and her plan was never to return home.
While in the Kingdom, she had two children, now aged nine and seven. Her husband died two years ago, leaving her alone to care for the children. Because Fola and her family are over-stayers, they are ineligible for, and receive, absolutely no government benefits whatsoever. The children cannot go to a public school or university and are left to depend on Qur’anic teachers and home or community schooling, if any. Because many have no legal identification, they are often denied basic medical care at government hospitals and institutions and receive no benefits of any kind.
Through broken English and Arabic, Fola managed to say, “What can I do? I can’t go home. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. This is where I want my children to grow up. I want them to be Saudis and Muslims. They have a better chance here than in Niger.”
As far as government authorities are concerned, however, the Saudi bin lady group in effect doesn’t exist. Since they have no papers of any kind, and deny any knowledge of English or Arabic or any commonly used language in the Kingdom, repatriating them has proven to be quite a challenge for the immigration and passport authorities.
One passport and immigration worker told Arab News, “Suppose we go out and arrest them all. What do we do with them then? What countries do we send them to? One woman says she’s from Chad one day, then the following day she says she’s from Niger. Even using languages and dialects to judge where they’re from isn’t 100 percent reliable. You can have a citizen of Niger who has lived in Chad all her life and come to Saudi to perform Haj. If we go by her dialect, then we would send her to Chad which isn’t her country. Without her telling us, we won’t know she’s from Niger. If we put her on a plane to Chad, she won’t be accepted there because she has no citizenship documents. She will simply be sent back to Saudi Arabia.”
According to a source at the passports and immigration department, this is exactly what has happened in the past. Deportees that were flown to ‘their’ countries were denied entry and sent back to the Kingdom because they had no paperwork or were not citizens of the country they had arrived in. “No one really bothers them much now. We just accept the situation and leave them alone,” the immigration official admitted.
For the most part, the bin ladies go about their business having minimal contact with either the local population or the police. Some of them of course prefer to beg but when coming from the bin ladies, a request for money won’t be a verbal one.
They simply sit by your car quietly to see if they will get a handout. Even the anti-beggary police leave them alone. “They represent only a small fraction of the total numbers of beggars in Jeddah, and are, for the most part, the least problematic,” one anti-beggary official commented.
So far away from home and with little individual resources, the bin ladies form groups and alliances with other bin ladies for support. A group of seven or eight will usually come together to a certain area and scavenge the bins. Some of the women in the group will collect cans while others concentrate on cartons.
To increase productivity and to keep their children close by, the women put even the youngest family members to work.
Arab News was at Mahmoud Saeed Mall on Siteen Street when a bin lady arrived in the parking lot with two barefoot children. As she poked about in the large dumpster with her stick and then climbed in to retrieve the objects of her desire, her two little boys, aged five and seven, ran around the parking lot, looking into the smaller litter baskets which were about their height. Their little arms were just long enough to reach the cans at the bottom of the baskets.
For the most part, the bin ladies leave the public alone and are left alone in return. Nevertheless, there are occasional complaints against them. One complaint by several businesses that we spoke to included the condition of the pavement and the road surrounding the bins after a bin rummaging has taken place. As we followed some bin ladies around, we saw that this particular complaint was valid.
The bin ladies weren’t cleaning up after themselves and were placing pedestrians and motor traffic in danger by partially obstructing the pavements and roads.
Residents in one particular street where the bin ladies make camp everyday are fed up. A resident of the area just south of Danube Tahlia, a Filipino driver for a Saudi family told us: “They come to this area in a big group and set up camp at the end of this street. They go collect as much as their carts can hold, then bring it here and leave it.
One woman sits and watches over everyone’s belongings until they all return. This big pile of cardboard and cans just accumulates all day long until someone with a pickup truck comes and collects it all. Of course while she sits there, drivers will also pull up and hand her money out of charity.”
The Saudi bin lady group has become a regular sight in Jeddah, more so than in Riyadh. Arriving on a Haj or Umrah visa, they are for the most part, confined to the Jeddah area, their presence now a familiar sight. They usually go about their business which is essentially, recycling.
Though they don’t have much to smile about, like their African brothers and sisters at home, they tend to smile a lot. All one has to do to discover that is take the time to go and strike up a conversation. It won’t be easy because of the language barrier but it will definitely be interesting.
