Blog: The 'halfa' donkeys of Tunisia

Jeremy Hulme SPANA's Chief Executive  writes from Tunisia

In the central part of Tunisia – and the poorest part, (poor soil, dry climate and no tourists) round the town of Kasserine, there has grown up a slightly bizarre ‘cottage’ industry.

On the bleak, treeless steppe land, grows a grass called ‘halfa’ in the local language. It is a tough, drought-resistant plant that amazingly is transformed into high quality paper – used for bank notes and artists drawing papers. More importantly for the local people, it is ‘free’ so families gather it for five or six months a year, and bring it back to one of the sixty-four depots scattered around the region.

Of course, no prizes for guessing who does the carrying – donkeys. And equally of course the SPANA mobile clinic seeks to look after them.

I was pleased to see this trip, that some of the carrying is done by cart – but there are still thousands of donkeys that actually carry these huge loads on their backs – and what is really interesting, uniquely, we  actually get to see how much they have carried. Because of course the bundles are weighed when they get to the depot and then recorded against the name of the family for settling up at the end.

It is nothing to see loads of 150 kgs or more being carried, and the average journey is eleven kilometres. (But before you get the idea this is the road to easy riches, a 150kg load nets the family a massive £6 for ten hours of work).

But the really astonishing thing is that those donkeys are carrying nearly their own weight over long distances, without coming to any great harm, or even appearing to be particularly knackered.

The donkey is indeed a truly amazing creature.

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Jeremy Hulme

Chief Executive