MAKE friend and founder of iFixit Kyle Wiens is traveling with a crew through the slums of Kibera, Cairo’s infamous Garbage City, and Cairo’s electronics markets revealing how and why fixers do what they do. They’re working on a documentary film about repair titled Fixers.

There are superheroes in our midst, and they’re not wearing capes or costumes. They live in unassuming places, performing miracles with the most humble of tools. They bring ancient machinery rumbling back to life, fabricate new radiators from metal scraps, and repair minuscule circuitry with simple hand tools. They are brilliant hackers, tinkerers, mechanics and repair technicians, transforming our unwanted junk into coveted treasures — genius “fixers” with a preternatural ability to rip apart a piece of hardware and give it a new soul. Fixers are doing more than repairing things. They are the solution to an environmental problem poisoning our planet.

Kyle and crew are posting travel logs on The Atlantic as their journey progresses. The first installment is titled “Why Fixers Will Save Our Planet.”