• About us
  • Our community
  • Editorial charter
  • fr Français
  • en English
  • ar العربية
Monday, August 15, 2022
  • Login
Medfeminiswiya
  • In-depth
    • All
    • Features
    • Files
    The women of Tarantism: possessed, healers, musicians...

    The women of Tarantism: possessed, healers, musicians...

    The right to livable life: On the right to abortion in Montenegro

    The right to livable life: On the right to abortion in Montenegro

    Abortion in Croatia only works in theory. The case of Mirela Čavajda proves it.

    Abortion in Croatia only works in theory. The case of Mirela Čavajda proves it.

    Wartime rape: a millennial shame

    Wartime rape: a millennial shame

    Tunisian women journalists face harassment by Ennahdha members

    Tunisian women journalists face harassment by Ennahdha members

    Algeria, where women’s money are in men’s pockets

    Algeria, where women’s money are in men’s pockets

    Trending Tags

    • Abortion and SRHR
    • Transgenderism
    • Safe spaces
    • Women in rural areas
  • On the move
    • All
    • Collectives
    • Portraits
    • Tactics
    Hela Ouardi « Le corps féminin était perçu comme un avatar du territoire ennemi »

    Hela Ouardi: “The female body perceived as an avatar of enemy territory”

    Les femmes et la sphère publique

    Women and the public sphere

    Spain passes decision to grant women the right to a 3-day-leave during menstruation. But in Italy “your period is your fault”.

    Spain passes decision to grant women the right to a 3-day-leave during menstruation. But in Italy “your period is your fault”.

  • Creations
    • All
    • Reviews
    • Visual Arts
    Women voices against Assad

    Women voices against Assad

    Nawal El Saadawi: “I am freer than Simone de Beauvoir”

    Nawal El Saadawi: “I am freer than Simone de Beauvoir”

    March 8 in a picture: On the 7th day, they rested

    March 8 in a picture: On the 7th day, they rested

  • Opinion
    Mental suffering and gender

    Mental suffering and gender

    The exhausted feminist tools and quick-fix solutions

    The exhausted feminist tools and quick-fix solutions

    “Unjust provocation”: Justifying femicides, blaming victims

    “Unjust provocation”: Justifying femicides, blaming victims

  • Multimedia
    Testimonies on the abortion in MENA region

    Testimonies on the abortion in MENA region

  • Country context
  • Blog
No Result
View All Result
  • In-depth
    • All
    • Features
    • Files
    The women of Tarantism: possessed, healers, musicians...

    The women of Tarantism: possessed, healers, musicians...

    The right to livable life: On the right to abortion in Montenegro

    The right to livable life: On the right to abortion in Montenegro

    Abortion in Croatia only works in theory. The case of Mirela Čavajda proves it.

    Abortion in Croatia only works in theory. The case of Mirela Čavajda proves it.

    Wartime rape: a millennial shame

    Wartime rape: a millennial shame

    Tunisian women journalists face harassment by Ennahdha members

    Tunisian women journalists face harassment by Ennahdha members

    Algeria, where women’s money are in men’s pockets

    Algeria, where women’s money are in men’s pockets

    Trending Tags

    • Abortion and SRHR
    • Transgenderism
    • Safe spaces
    • Women in rural areas
  • On the move
    • All
    • Collectives
    • Portraits
    • Tactics
    Hela Ouardi « Le corps féminin était perçu comme un avatar du territoire ennemi »

    Hela Ouardi: “The female body perceived as an avatar of enemy territory”

    Les femmes et la sphère publique

    Women and the public sphere

    Spain passes decision to grant women the right to a 3-day-leave during menstruation. But in Italy “your period is your fault”.

    Spain passes decision to grant women the right to a 3-day-leave during menstruation. But in Italy “your period is your fault”.

  • Creations
    • All
    • Reviews
    • Visual Arts
    Women voices against Assad

    Women voices against Assad

    Nawal El Saadawi: “I am freer than Simone de Beauvoir”

    Nawal El Saadawi: “I am freer than Simone de Beauvoir”

    March 8 in a picture: On the 7th day, they rested

    March 8 in a picture: On the 7th day, they rested

  • Opinion
    Mental suffering and gender

    Mental suffering and gender

    The exhausted feminist tools and quick-fix solutions

    The exhausted feminist tools and quick-fix solutions

    “Unjust provocation”: Justifying femicides, blaming victims

    “Unjust provocation”: Justifying femicides, blaming victims

  • Multimedia
    Testimonies on the abortion in MENA region

    Testimonies on the abortion in MENA region

  • Country context
  • Blog
No Result
View All Result
Medfeminiswiya
No Result
View All Result

“Tomorrow at dawn, I’ll go back to the fields” (1/2)

At a time when men are abandoning farming, the workers on the fields of Regueb are now armies of women ensuring food security for all Tunisians while still underpaid, uninsured and unorganized.

Olfa Belhassine by Olfa Belhassine
24 January 2022
in Files, In-depth
46 1
0
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

This post is also available in: Français (French) العربية (Arabic)

From November to February is the missra, the olive picking season when women are paid the most. Photo by Olfa Belhassine

The invitation to travel deep into the countryside of Régueb, in the center of Tunisia, right in the bowels of its rurality, came from Nisrine Amri, aged 26, representative of a solar energy agency in Regueb. I met Nisrine on 11 December 2021 at the Congress of Social and Citizen Movements organized by the “Forum tunisien des droits économiques et sociaux”* (Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights).

Together with her friend Intissar Akrouti, an unemployed woman with two degrees, aged 25, they came from Régueb to testify about the working and transport conditions of rural women, the subject of a workshop led by the association “Asswat Nissaa” (Women’s Voices), partner of the Congress. That day, Nesrine had upset the audience by evoking, in great detail, the story of her dog named Clash, faithful and assiduous companion of her mother Nebiha, who every day goes deep into the surrounding land and travels for miles to pick herbs, shoots and stems.

Replacing hay that is too expensive for the modest family purse, this precious food is served to her meagre livestock. However, one day the rickety cart (el battah) on which Nebiha stores and transports her burden of branches falls over her and immobilizes her. “Thanks to its wails, Clash alerted us to the accident my mother suffered and the place where she had fallen. Only the dog was able to empathize with my mother and her overwhelming workload. But Clash died recently, and my mother now leaves very early in the morning for the fields, without her guardian angel!” says Nisrine, her voice full of tears.

https://medfeminiswiya.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/videoNesrine.mp4
Nesrine Amri telling at the Palais des Congrès in Tunis about the hard work of her mother, Nébiha: "Only my dog Clash felt empathy for my mother". Video by Olfa Belhassine

Off to the “Nebiha’s lands”

This is how chance encounters paved a rich and touching path for me as I prepared to take another path to begin a series of reports on rural women in my country.

With a setback of affirmation, Nisrine Amri brushes aside the last traces of my hesitation: “In Regueb, all women are agricultural workers or have practiced this activity at some point in their lives. From a young age, all the girls devoted themselves to agricultural work, some to acquire school supplies, others to help their mother pick the olives, some to earn pocket money and others because they ended up coming back after completing a school or university course. By constraint, since the job offer for graduates is very limited in the region.”

Nisrine looks at me and insists: “Come to Regueb and you’ll see for yourself. Besides, we are in full “missra” -the season when agricultural day laborers are best paid. Since they are in high demand for the olive harvest, they receive up to 20 dinars (6.13 euros) a day instead of 10 (3.06 euros) to 13 dinars (3.98 euros) in normal times. Come to Regueb, we will offer you food and lodging!”

Two days later, I took off to Nébiha’s lands.

A predominantly female workforce

The small town of Regueb is located 280 km away from Tunis and 37 km southeast of Sidi Bouzid, cradle of the Tunisian Revolution of December 2010 - January 2011. A revolution of precarious people, small farmers and the damned of the earth marked by this feeling of disregard mirrored to them by a political power that has always favored the coastal regions over the Tunisian hinterland in its development plans. This Tunisia is steeped in rurality and small farming, where today, women represent the majority of the workforce: the female population providing nearly 80% of the agricultural workforce, according to figures from the Tunisian Ministry for Women’s Affairs.

With 30% of the total Tunisian agricultural production, the governorate of Sidi Bouzid, to which Regueb is attached, embodies the food garden that feeds a large segment of Tunisians. The land there is very extensive. There are large fields of olive, almond and apricot trees and orchards planted with carrots, onions, beans and vines along the road.

Oil mills belonging to wealthy operators-investors from the Sfax and Sahel region, some of which export their production abroad, demonstrate the significance and place of olive growing here. Herds of sheep, goats and calves appear in the distance in the pastures. However, in this territory with an arid and semi-arid climate, rainfall has been more than sparse over the past four years. For miles, fruit trees and young olive trees seem to be burned alive from drought and thirst.

At the end of the afternoon on Monday 13 December, we took the direction of the Amri house, in Sidi Ameur (11 km away from Regueb) named after a 15th century Muslim holy man from whom the tribe derives its genealogical origins. The Awamriya tribe to which Nisrine’s father belongs is now sedentary. It was the day of the weekly “souk” and the farms were deserted. The women flocked there the next day, at dawn, “at the hour when the countryside whitens.”

A body worn out by the sun and the cold

A l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne de Régueb. Photo Olfa Belhassine

Arising in the heart of the olive groves at the end of a bumpy track of one and a half km, the household is modest, partly unfinished. With its beaten earth hallway, it was enlarged over the births of the six children of parents Abdellatif and Nébiha Amri, aged 60 and 58 years respectively, on a plot of 4 ha of land.

Water is precious here, because the territory is still not connected to the national running water distribution network. A well for household work and a cistern supplied with drinking water regularly purchased from an Agricultural Development Group attempt to meet the needs of the family. However, the couscous with the chicken from the tiny chicken family farm and with vegetables from Nébiha’s potager is abundant. The olive oil, which flavors the cucumber salad with a fresh herbal aftertaste, is extracted from the Amri olive trees.

Hospitality despite poverty

We had dinner in a warm and relaxed atmosphere on two low tables surrounded by mattresses placed on the floor. A brazier tempers this cold December evening. Nebiha was discreet and served the whole table with a smile on her face. She only began to talk about her daily work once dinner was over and her family members, her husband and six children, had each gone about their own activities.

Between evocations and confidences, her life as a little female fellah unfolds, a woman whose body has worn out over the years, etiolated and wrinkled under the effect of the sun, the wind and the cold in order to draw the maximum resources from nature.

“As soon as my first baby arrived, full of determination, I declared to my husband: “I want this child and all those who will follow to finish their studies”. A brilliant student, I was forced to drop out of school at the age of 10 to obey my elder brother, he who had repeated his class several times and could therefore no longer share the long journey to school with me. I have kept a terrible frustration. Abdellatif (husband's first name) then replied: “I agree. But on the other hand, don’t ask me to buy you anything superfluous, not even a dress for Eid!” I have not stopped working since that day to make my children gain what I had lost.”

Nebiha’s fight

Ouvrière cueilleuse d'olives à Régueb sur un champ situé à proximité de la maison de Nebiha. Photo Olfa Belhassine

Nebiha was born in Deraa, a village near Sidi Bouzid, where her father was an olive tree pruner. Between the age of 25 and 30, when her children were at primary school level, Nebiha used to wake up at 4am to take care of her goats, hoe her olive trees and remove weeds in her vegetable garden. At around 5am, she used to go to her stoves, previously located outside the house, to prepare the “kessra” (local round bread made from fine semolina) on the wood fire for her children’s breakfast. She then took to the fields in search of herbs, leaves and twigs to renew the food reserves of her animals.

“There is not a single perimeter of olive trees in the surroundings that I have not crisscrossed. Walking up to five kilometers, this task takes me between three and four hours daily. One day, the owner of the huge neighboring farm who is from Sfax, met my husband.

“You should nestle your wife in your eyes’ pupil and close your eyelids to protect her and show her your gratitude!” he told him. How many times have I had accidents! How many times have I fallen with my load! How many times have I been kicked by the donkey pulling the cart! Nothing could prevent me from continuing to wake up at 3am in summer and a little later in winter: sending children to school, then to boarding school for college costs a lot,” recalled Nébiha Amri between tears and laughter.

When the rainfall was better, in May and June, Nebiha used to participate in the wheat harvest on the land of her husband’s family, on the other side of the main road. Abandoned, this perimeter turned into wasteland. In the region, the cost of irrigation has become unsustainable for small farmers, who are visibly impoverished under the combined effect of rising agricultural production prices and climate conditions. Today, with his eldest son, Abdellatif practices the drilling of boreholes for the farmers next door. When she arrives back home, mother Amri does not allow herself any moment of respite. Once the household chores are done, she gets down to her weaving loom, working until nightfall to produce margoum (carpets in colourful colours), blankets and burnous primarily intended for self-consumption or as savings value.

Nebiha is certainly aware of the value and strength of her work. However, not having a salary, she seems to assimilate some of her tasks as a continuation of her domestic prerogatives.

Whatever her chronic back pain, her rheumatism, her fluctuating tension, Nebiha has almost granted her wish of the past. Only has her youngest daughter is left to accompany to her higher studies in mechanics in Sfax. The bet is almost won. Even if today, none of her children holds a stable position commensurate with the courage of their mother, she expresses her pride with a smile lighting up her beautiful, tanned face: “The children from our people reach secondary school with difficulty. People here respect me and my husband for successfully educating our children.”




*The Congress of Social Movements and Citizens organised by the FTDES, a Tunisian left-wing NGO defending disadvantaged groups was held in Tunis between 10 to 12 December 2021.

 

This report was produced with the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (North Africa Office, Tunis).
Tags: Women in rural areas
Olfa Belhassine

Olfa Belhassine

Olfa Belhassine is a Tunisian journalist who has been working with the Tunisian daily “La Presse” since 1990. After the 2011 protests, her articles started appearing in “Libération”, “Le Monde” and “Courrier International”, a testament to her extensive experience as a journalist reporting from Tunisia during President Ben Ali's rule and after his fall. In 2013, Olfa was awarded the first journalism prize of the “Center of Arab Women” for her investigative work on customary marriage in Tunisia, published in “La Presse.” Olfa has also been corresponding since 2015 for the JusticeInfo.net, a website specializing in transitional justice around the world. In 2016, she co-authored with Hedia Baraket an investigative publication on the political transition in Tunisia, titled "Ces nouveaux mots qui font la Tunisie".

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

J'accepte les termes et conditions et la Politique de confidentialité .

Facebook Twitter Instagram RSS
Medfeminiswiya

Medfeminiswiya is a feminist network that brings together women journalists working in the fields of media and content production in the Mediterranean region.

  • About us
  • Our community
  • Editorial charter
  • Disclaimer
 

SEARCH BY CATEGORY

  • Algeria
  • Blogs
  • Collectives
  • Country Context
  • Creations
  • Croatia
  • Editor's picks
  • Egypt
  • Features
  • Files
  • France
  • Greece
  • In-depth
  • Italy
  • Lebanon
  • Libya
  • Malta
  • Montenegro
  • Morocco
  • Multimedia
  • On the move
  • Opinion
  • Palestine
  • Portraits
  • Reviews
  • Spain
  • Tactics
  • Tunisia
  • Turkey
  • Uncategorized
  • Visual Arts
 

Follow us

  • Derrière l’adoption la semaine passée à une large majorité de « oui », de la Constitution de Kaies Saied se cachent 70 % d’abstentionnistes. Ainsi que beaucoup de voix de femmes inquiètes de toutes les régressions relevées dans la nouvelle loi fondamentale quant aux droits et libertés des Tunisiennes. Par @belhassineolfa
  • À Rabat, Souad Hdidou est la seule femme chauffeur de taxi. Malgré les nombreuses difficultés du domaine, Souad a réussi à faire sa place au milieu des hommes. Un métier rare pour une femme qu’elle exerce fervemment, à roue libre. Écrit par @_linamsk
  • La plus petite et la plus sauvage des îles Éoliennes est connue pour ses histoires fantastiques de présences mystérieuses et d
  • Les laggata, les glaneuses de palourdes, pratiquent une pêche à pied dévolue aux femmes de l’archipel kerkennien. Entre exploitation des intermédiaires du labeur des femmes et interdiction de collecte des coquillages par les autorités, elles vivent une situation de plus en plus difficile. Une crise aggravée par les transformations sociales, économiques et écologiques que connait leur île aux reliefs marins insolites en Méditerranée. Reportage réalisé par @belhassineolfa dans le cadre du partenariat entre @medfeminiswiya et @rosalux_northafrica
  • Faouzia Charfi, personnalité scientifique et politique de premier plan en Tunisie, nous a accordé un long entretien dont voici le premier volet. En tant que féministe de longue date, elle nous fait l’honneur d’être la première à entrouvrir la porte du cercle des Marraines de Medfeminiswiya. Au fil des mois, Medfeminiswiya rencontrera d’autres personnalités féministes des rives de la Méditerranée et chacune d’entre elles sera invitée à rejoindre Medfeminiswiya et le cercle des Marraines. @franceska.medfeminiswiya @francoisekayser
  • “What is the common denominator of such policies? It is the mantra of endangering "traditional values", as well as the "freedom of speech" of neoconservatives. Using the achievements of the so-called "free world", they actually want to overthrow a progressive society from within, considering many of the freedoms that have been won "decadent" and preventing people to have "livable life" (Judith Butler). By abolishing the right to safe and legal abortion, not only the health and rights of women and their position in society are endangered, but the entire society and the issue of freedom for all is endangered.” By Katarina Vujović - Montenegrin journalist.

© 2021 Medfeminiswiya - Mediterranean Network for Feminist Information

  • fr Français
  • en English
  • ar العربية
  • In-depth
  • On the move
  • Creations
  • Opinion
  • Multimedia
  • Country context
  • Blog
No Result
View All Result

© 2021 Medfeminiswiya - Mediterranean Network for Feminist Information

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Add New Playlist

Ce site n'utilise pas de cookies. This website does not use cookies. هذا الموقع لا يستخدم ملفات تعريف الارتباط.