Suad leaves her hut-like home at the crack of dawn with her feverish baby strapped to her chest, and his two brothers.  The children will spend the day with her in a cane-refining workshop. Many women like Souad also head early towards cane-refining workshops spread out acros the village of Menbesta on the outskirts of Kairouan. Cane is used in furniture and garden umbrellas.

Harsh life

Suad leaves her hut-like home at the crack of dawn with her feverish baby strapped to her chest, and his two brothers.  The children will spend the day with her in a cane-refining workshop. Many women like Souad also head early towards cane-refining workshops spread out acros the village of Menbesta on the outskirts of Kairouan. Cane is used in furniture and garden umbrellas.

Harsh life

Suad earns less than US $10/day to help her unemployed husband. “If I do not work, there will be no food on the table,” she said. “I have to work in the workshop because I could not find a stable job in a factory nearby the village.”

Since the revolution, cane refining and selling have gained momentum as an economic and social activity in Menbesta. Employing dozens of women, the profession is not stable but remains a solution for poor families in this marginalized, underdeveloped region with deteriorating services.

Being located near the industrial zone has not benefited the village since the zone only employs a small number of villagers. Most of the zone’s workers are from neighboring governorates, which has made villagers feel frustrated.

Suad, though unsatisfied with her status, considers herself lucky because she has found a job to provide for her family. “I hope my work term will go as far as possible,” she says.

Suad spends long hours cleaning reeds and removing branches and leaves. When she comes back home at sunset, she and her children are exhausted.

Suad, like most poor families here suffer deteriorating purchasing power as a result of soaring prices, low wages, and a devaluated Tunisian dinar.

Fragile career

The Kairouan Regional Handicraft Directorate (KRHD) does not consider cane-refining as a handicraft nor does it consider its workers to be craftspersons. KRHD head Tariq Khalaf says he has called upon reed workshop owners to convert cane into artifacts so that the profession can be classified as a handicraft and also to cooperate with women’s associations to train workers. Kairouan has some 30,000 craftspersons, 90 per cent of whom are women who work in carpet and textile, unstable sectors that suffer from difficulties.

He argues that this trend will enable workers to have professional cards that allow them to gain access to financial privileges in addition to product display and promotion opportunities in exhibitions in collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism and Handicrafts.