This take on women’s independence packs a (peppery) punch

Smoky, savory, and packing a punch, the bright crimson pepper paste has long been a culinary do-all for Tunisians.

Harissa adds spice to soup and sizzle to sandwiches, turns couscous caliente, and can serve simply as a fiery dip.

Often eaten twice a day, harissa is such a staple in Tunisia that the government petitioned UNESCO in 2020 to add the condiment to the world’s intangible cultural heritage list.

But for Najwa Dhaflawi and the rural women of Kairouan in central Tunisia, harissa has meant something more – a peppery path to independence.

In the village of Menzel Mehiri, 125 miles south of Tunis in the heart of Tunisia’s pepper belt, women have relied on farming and harvesting the chile peppers on other people’s lands for generations. The peppers were sent to factories in the capital that churned out the harissa served on tables across the country.

It is grueling work, with 3:30 a.m. starts and long hours toiling in the sun.

But the worst, residents say, was the commute. Female workers were packed in the open beds of pickup trucks, which, due to their unlawful seating arrangements, were driven too fast and went off-road to avoid the police, sometimes accidentally sending farmhands out of the truck and to their deaths.

“Every week on the way to work in the fields, there would be at least one incident where I almost died,” says veteran pepper picker Khansah Dhaflawi, Najwa’s older sister. “I’ve seen women get injured so bad you would swear off farming forever. But there is no other work to be had.”

Seven years ago, Najwa Dhaflawi had had enough. Her answer: band women together to produce their very own harissa, free of middle-men – or any men.

She created Errim, Arabic for gazelle*, an all-rural-women’s cooperative through which village women plant, cultivate, and harvest peppers, then dry them in their homes and produce the harissa themselves in their own workshop. The cooperative solved the hazardous commute problem primarily by working more locally, but also by arranging safer modes of transportation to the few farms that are not within walking distance.

“We were tired of being taken advantage of,” Ms. Dhaflawi says as workers in scrubs and face masks prep for the next bushel in Errim’s spotless, laboratory-like workshop. “We wanted to work in a safe environment, to protect one another. And to be paid fair wages.”

Cooperatives like this were banned in the days of dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Ms. Dhaflawi modeled the cooperative on organizations she saw sprout up in the capital in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring.

On this day, dozens of jars of Errim’s freshly produced harissa are placed in crates bound for grocery stores, boutique shops, and tourist restaurants along Tunisia’s coast, as well as for export to France and Switzerland.

With about two pounds of peppers making a pound of harissa, the workshop produces more than 400 pounds of the condiment a day.

Many residents jumped at the chance to work for a local woman. Errim has now grown to include 164 women from the area, benefiting families on each rung in the supply chain, from veteran pepper pickers to women who otherwise could not find work.

“There was no way my husband would allow me to work on the farms – it wasn’t safe – even though we needed the money,” says Nijat al-Bulti, a mother of two, as she places soaked peppers into an industrial grinder. “This project was a lifeline. It’s a clean and safe workplace I can walk to.”

This year Errim is using its profits to buy and rent nearby land plots for sharecropping, paying farm owners better prices and terms than the big corporations.

After years of watching big agro dominate their lands, these women are reclaiming dozens of acres of Kairouan’s farmland for themselves.

“The key to our success is local; I am using everything from Kairouan. The objective of the project is to give value to simple, natural products and bring back value to the community,” Ms. Dhaflawi says as she walks between rows of evergreen pepper crops on an adjacent sandy plot. “It’s a chain – the benefits reach each person in the process.”

Although Ms. Dhaflawi and her workers refuse to give away their secret recipe, the main ingredients are familiar to Tunisians: sun-dried peppers, coriander seeds, ground caraway, garlic, and olive oil – all locally grown.

And the taste?

Ms. Dhaflawi insists that her smoky-smooth harissa is mild. At least, by Kairouan standards.

Depending on your threshold, you can scoop bread into dollops of their prize-winning harissa drizzled with olive oil and submerge your tastebuds with the garlic-infused spice. For those with less indestructible palates, a little dab will do.

After managing to stay afloat amid two years of pandemic shutdowns – one of the benefits of an all-local production line – the women now have their eyes on expanding their exports to take advantage of harissa’s growing foodie profile in the West.

Meanwhile, they are maintaining an affordable price of $1.60 per jar for Tunisians mired in an economic recession at home.

“If the harissa stops, our lives will stop,” cooperative member Najat Shawabi says as she packs the last of the day’s jars into a crate.

Ms. Dhaflawi insists these rural women have no intention of slowing down.

“We now know independence, that we can rely on ourselves,” she says. “We will never look back.”

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the Arabic translation for the word "errim." It means gazelle.