Mariam lives in a dwelling one can hardly call a house. She gets up at dawn every day and makes her daily journey up the surrounding mountains a few kilometers away on foot, paying no attention to her worn out shoes, which do not protect her feet against frosty winter weather. Her black gown reflects the sad days she has spent among the ranges of towering mountains.
Mariam lives in a dwelling one can hardly call a house. She gets up at dawn every day and makes her daily journey up the surrounding mountains a few kilometers away on foot, paying no attention to her worn out shoes, which do not protect her feet against frosty winter weather. Her black gown reflects the sad days she has spent among the ranges of towering mountains.
Since the time her husband set sail on an illegal voyage and had later joined an active mafia gang engaged in the sale and promotion of drugs, she has lost every hope for his return, financial support, or even asking about his children.
Esparto
Defying the traditional tribal constraints, Mariam was forced to search for livelihood to support her nine-member family. Her pale face, marked with an old tattoo and callused hands narrate the story of a long struggle with the coarse esparto grass.
Like many other households in Hassi El ferid, Mariam is not interested in politics, and she has never been concerned with the problems raised in Tunisia about Salafism, secularism or other issues. She has described herself as “a simple woman who strives all day to feed her impoverished family whose members would perish if she ever stopped her toil.”
Despite the harsh semi-desert climate of those areas in Sabasseb, in the central western region of Kasserine Governorate, she has not been dissuaded to abandon her daily trip up the surrounding mountains, where espartos cover a large area and where she spends long hours uprooting these plants. Mariam then carries a large bundle of the collected esparto, a weight that is too heavy for young men to bear, let alone an old woman at her age with a frail body.
The money she gets from the Esparto Paste and Paper Mill in Kasserine for a hundred kilos of espartos is about 10 Dinars (US $7). Mariam then sells what she gathers to private car owners driving past that place, who in turn sell them to farmers as fodder for their livestock. She is not aware that her daily work is not approved by government authorities.
Since her daughter was confined to bed as a consequence of a disease caused by hazardous substances leaking from the Paper Mill, she has never paid much attention to government decisions which, she says, have disregarded citizens’ rights to protection against epidemics and various diseases.
Fear of facing a similar fate
At a dark corner of Mariam’s cottage, her son Salem sat on an old wooden chair, holding a cigarette while starring at the corners of the room. He did not expect that after earning his university degree, he would one day be a character of the play he used to watch when he was an elementary schoolchild.
He said the tragedy he saw in his early childhood became a reality, passed from one generations to the next, because of the gloomy picture surrounding them, especially high rates of unemployment. He was forced to become a porter at an esparto sawmill. He would pull a huge metal carriage containing espartos to a truck that would in turn transport them to the Paper Mill.
“Can those who write on white paper notebooks imagine the suffering Mariam has been going through?” Salem asked sarcastically.
He could no longer tolerate the unbearable situation and began to seriously think about leaving the country, hoping to compensate his mother for the unbearable agony she experienced in order to pay for his education.
Mariam’s fears intensified when she heard about her son’s plans to leave the country, lest he should have the same fate his father had before him when he emigrated years ago and never returned. However, she failed to talk him out of his decision, especially with the difficulties facing the inhabitants in their daily trips to uproot esparto in search of a living.
Natural disaster
In his exploratory tour in the Sabasseb area, Saleh can be distinguished from a distance by his green clothes. He is an able-bodied man in his mid- fifties who is hired by the Department of Agriculture to enforce a ban on uprooting esparto, except in the seasons fixed by that department.
Saleh said he often turned a blind eye. “I am well aware of the size of suffering experienced by those remote impoverished villages.”
Nevertheless, Saleh is unpopular in the eyes of those social circles because he represents the authority of a state that has long failed to provide the population with a decent living.
Saleh explained that esparto smuggling constituted an economic and industrial disaster, due to a paper shortage caused by selling esparto to farmers as fodder, and also because of the year-round uprooting of this plant.
It is worth mentioning that Kasserine Paper Mill provides a living for thousands of families since it employs 780 permanent workers. In addition, 1,400 people work for the 70 esparto sawmill.
According to syndicate sources, the debt size of this company amounts to 47 million dinars (1 Dinar = US$ 29,000,000). The company’s debt owed to Electricity and Gas Authority has come up to about 17 million dinars (US $10 million).
This deficit disrupts any agreement between the government and the company’s syndicate for granting the risk grant, known as the “chlorine allowance.” Some company sources believe it is not possible to provide this grant at a time when the Minister of Industry has already presented a draft project to help the company resolve its financial problems. It is expected to present this file during the upcoming cabinet meeting.
The Hassi El Ferid area in Kasserine Governorate (midwestern Tunisia) produces more than 80% of the amounts of espartos used by the Paper Mill established in 1963 (the only plant of its kind in Tunisia). According to Midwest Development Office – a government institution under the Ministry of Agriculture – Hassi El Ferid ranks last in the nation’s development index.
