It seemed like a novel idea back in 1998 when the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture allocated two new villages for widows and divorced women: Nubaria Project in Beheira Governorate in northern Egypt and Saida Valley Project in southern Aswan.

But, what happened to that fantastic idea? Correspondents took a tour of the villages, which shed more light on the project. We spoke to a number of residents to learn more about the progress of their endeavor and learn how divorced and widowed women, who were allocated land and houses there, were faring.

It seemed like a novel idea back in 1998 when the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture allocated two new villages for widows and divorced women: Nubaria Project in Beheira Governorate in northern Egypt and Saida Valley Project in southern Aswan.

But, what happened to that fantastic idea? Correspondents took a tour of the villages, which shed more light on the project. We spoke to a number of residents to learn more about the progress of their endeavor and learn how divorced and widowed women, who were allocated land and houses there, were faring.

Beginning with a silver lining

“The project primarily aimed at protecting the orphaned children whose families lost their breadwinners from delinquency, displacement and homelessness and to help single parent families by providing them with a source of livelihood,” said Hamdi Kashef, Senior Supervisor of Saida Valley project. Samaha village has been allocated to widowed and divorced women as well as breadwinner women whose husbands suffer complete disability. The village consists of 303 households and each family has been earmarked a house and a six-acre piece of land. Total area of agricultural land in the village comes to 1818 acres.”

Kashef clarified that when the land and houses were handed over to the village women, several aid packages were provided to them including Food Aid Project for three years in a row. The village’s agricultural cooperatives also provided them with furniture, tractors and short-term loans of EGP 3000 (US $ 434) repayable after one year in addition to animal production loans consisting of five sheep and a ram the value of which were also repayable within a period of three years.

The description presented by the project supervisor was apparently very optimistic, but he concluded saying, “The village’s widowed and divorced women of the Nubaria project are better off than the women in Samaha village, thanks to the quality of Nubaria soil, which is more suitable for cultivation of all kinds of fruits such as strawberries, oranges, peaches and lemons compared to the barren, remote and non-urbanized Samaha village, which needs much land reclamation efforts.” Does the picture look different now? Perhaps, but the village inhabitants did know that their land needed great efforts to become productive. Kashef again said, “The difficulties faced in the area in which the village is located coupled with being distant from built-up areas by about 20 kilometers have caused a decline in the number of women residing in the village by 35% to 45%.”

Interviews with the village residents themselves provided a better picture of life in Samaha Village.

A village turned into exile

“The village consists of a barren desert that lacks so many things. People die once in a lifetime, but we die a hundred times a day,” said Sadia Hassan Hussein about the village’s widows. She added that she remained constantly worried until her children returned from the agricultural land for fear of being stung by scorpions or bitten by snakes.

Sadia said she had been extremely happy when she received the land and the house, but after a few days, she felt as though she had been in a big prison owing to the lack of services, transportation difficulties and rigorous life in the village.

I thought it was a gift!

“My husband died in the prime of youth at the age of 20 of liver disease, leaving me with four young children. I was happy at the outset when I was given a piece of land and a house in Samaha Village.  I considered it a God-sent gift to get food and shelter for my orphaned children,” said 56-year-old Fayza Ismail Ahmad, another resident in the village. She was later shocked after receiving the agricultural land when she discovered that there the village had a severe shortage of services and that the irrigation pumps went out of order shortly after she had received them, in addition to the poor soil quality and its need for a lot of money to be fertile and productive.

 “The situation of divorced and widowed women in the village is awful. We pay money to get drinking water because the drinking water in the village is contaminated and the health services are virtually non-existent. There is only one doctor at the health unit in Shahama village, dozens of kilometers away, in addition to the lack of public transportation. We are forced to hire private cars to take us to the town of Edfu. Another problem is the soaring price of fuel and oil needed for operating the irrigation pumps, which we also buy on the black market at high prices,” she explained.

Reeds and groundwater

On the other hand, Om Abdulkarim said some agricultural lands are extremely fertile and yield good annual production, but most of the land in the village suffers from high groundwater level causing large areas of land to be damaged or wasted. Many areas are now rendered absolutely non cultivable and have turned into ponds in which reed and cypress trees have grown.

Om Abdulkarim has not denied that buildings are available in the village especially in Isaaf and the commercial district, but she underlined that these buildings hardly provide any tangible services in addition to their lack of staff.

She has also pointed out that the village suffers a lack of drinkable water due to being mixed with agricultural drainage water, as officials bring in large quantities of drinking water to the village population at a rate of five jerry cans per family per week, which is, of course, insufficient. This prompted women to buy drinking water at their own expense.

An attempt

“I was eligible for participation in this project, as I am a widow and have no agricultural holdings, in addition to supporting my five children. I was, therefore, allocated a house and a piece of land in the village about nine years ago,” said Nabiha Mohammed Abdullah who points out another problem with the project.

“Most of the female beneficiaries in the village are old and cannot carry out the agricultural tasks and land reclamation work. Therefore, they have to basically depend on their children. If the children are too young, the women will be unable to do the required work,” she stressed.

Abdullah also pointed out that large areas of groundwater, which caused damage to great parts of the land, forced several families to abandon the village. Many others sold their land and houses immediately after they received EGP 30,000 because of their inability to take care of the land,” she added.

Costly education

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that dropout rates increased, especially among females, because there are no secondary or commercial schools in the village, which forced many residents to stop sending their daughters to school after completing basic education. “Many girls had to quit school after completing their basic certificates, due to their parents’ inability to afford the transportation costs amounting to at least 15 pounds a day per student to travel to the agricultural school at the town of Edfu and back,” said Hajaji Ibrahim Ahmad, son of one the beneficiaries in the village.

Golden advice

 “Officials should continue building more villages for the divorced and widowed in Egypt,” said Sadia Hassan, “Considering the failure of implementing this concept in Samaha Village.  Life here has turned into an exile and worsened the problems faced by divorced and widowed women, instead of alleviating our suffering.”