by Alice Gray
Workshop for local farmers
with technicians from the Ministry of Agriculture, November 2014.
Photo by Habiba Community.
Nestled between the rugged
Sinai Mountains and the gently lapping waters of the Red Sea in
Nuweiba, a small port town in southern Sinai, lies Habiba Community:
a pioneering organic farm, a community agriculture initiative, a
learning centre and a beach lodge.
The vision of Habiba is to
support the Sinai community in creating a secure and abundant future
for themselves, transitioning away from dependency on tourism and
government handouts. Maged El Said and his wife Lorena started the
project in 2007, motivated by their love for the community that had
become their home over the past 20 years.
Nuweiba village is in South
Sinai, an area traditionally populated by Bedouin tribes, which saw
rapid development as a tourist destination during the latter half of
the 20th century, as the beguiling beauty of the Red Sea’s
pristine coral reefs combined with the austere splendor of the Sinai
peninsular’s granite and sandstone mountains was recognized.
Unfortunately, all too
often, this development took no account of either the environment or
the local communities, and much damage has been done to both. In
Sharm el Sheikh, the most popular resort in the region, there is
barely a single Bedouin owned business and the local community has
been almost completely disenfranchised from the lucrative tourist
industry that has sprung up. Hotels with swimming pools and lawns
guzzle scarce water resources and pollute the environment with their
wastes. Many tourists travel to Sharm el Sheikh on all-inclusive
‘package deals’, some barely leaving their hotels and many not
venturing outside the town. Today, over 45% of Sinai’s Bedouin
community live in poverty according to the Social Fund for
Development’s 2013 Poverty Map (read report here:
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/sinai-egypt-residents-anger-empty-government-promises.html).
In Dahab and Nuweiba, on the
south-eastern coast, the story was a little different, as development
was more often done in cooperation with the Bedouin communities. The
resorts that grew up had a very different feel to them, with sea-side
beach lodges constructed of local materials, and sometimes with
Bedouin owners, offering rustic accommodation and Bedouin guides
offering safaris and camel treks into the interior. Maged
(originally from Cairo) founded Habiba Beach Lodge in 1994, and for
many years ran a successful business in cooperation with his
neighbours. Today, however, tourism is in decline, due to growing
political instability in the region, and cannot be exclusively relied
on to provide livelihoods. Due to the heavy investment of Egyptian
businessmen in Sharm el Sheikh, this area is protected inside a
security cordon maintained by the Egyptian army, but this protection
does not extend to resorts further north, like Nuweiba.
Hence, Habiba Community was
born, in an effort to diversify income and create food security
through pioneering and promoting sustainable, organic agriculture.
First, Maged bought land and set up Habiba Organic Farm, to pioneer
successful techniques for desert farming and experiment with novel
crops.
Moringa oleifera trees at
Habiba Farm, November 2014. Photo by Alice Gray.
The farm is a mixed orchard
and vegetable production system, with poultry and other small
livestock. Maged was the first farmer in Sinai to grow Moringa
oleifera, sometimes known as the ‘miracle tree’ – a fast
growing, nitrogen-fixing, drought tolerant tree with a multiplicity
of uses. The leaves are edible and are a ‘superfood’ with
enormous nutritional benefits: containing more Vitamin C than oranges
and more iron than spinach (find out more here:
http://miracletrees.org/).
The seeds are high in nutritious oil and are also edible, or can be
used as a flocculant for purifying water. Maged has had enormous
success with this crop and is experimenting with inter-planting it
with Date Palms – a signature crop of the Sinai.
Maged has worked hard to
share his ideas and successes with others, inviting experts to give
workshops for aspiring farmers free of charge, supporting several new
farmers to start up their businesses, distributing seeds and
equipment and building a network for marketing organic produce.
Every week, he attends the Dahab Community Market, holding a stall
all day to sell produce and raise awareness of Habiba and its work.
Maged El Said managing his
store at Dahab Community Market, February 2014. Photo by Alice Gray.
He also started the Sinai
Date Palm Foundation as a way for community members to buy in without
having to buy land or start their own farms. This innovative but
simple strategy is to sell ‘shares’ in a date growing business,
where high quality Medjool date palms are grown and maintained
by the Habiba Farm team, and processed and sold by the Date Palm
Foundation. By buying a share, a community member becomes the owner
of one tree and receives 80% of the profit from the sale of the raw
product (20% is taken to cover the costs of running the farm). The
Foundation undertakes to buy all the dates from the farm and process
and market them, providing jobs for local people. Profits are used
to expand the business, and buy more equipment or more land (or you
could say, surpluses are returned to the system).
Never content to rest on
their laurels, Habiba have recently started a brand new Learning
Centre to help educate the children of Nuweiba and equip them with
the skills they need to face an uncertain future. Education in the
Sinai is generally poorly funded and somewhat ineffectual as the
Sinai Bedouin remain one of the most marginalised sectors of Egyptian
society. Lorena Al Said is leading an initiative to support the
education of local children, teaching English, Arabic, Music, Art and
of course, farming skills in an after school club, open 5 days per
week. The Learning Centre has proved enormously popular and now
has around 40 regular participants.
Lorena Al Said working with
Nuweiba children at Habiba Learning Centre. Photo by Habiba
Community.
Indeed, the program is so
popular that new facilities need to be built so that it can continue
to grow and prosper. In cooperation with ECOntACT (www.econtact.be),
an Italian group promoting all forms of reuse and exchange, Habiba
Community will construct a strawbale building to serve as a classroom
and laboratory. Funding is being generated through the participation
of paying volunteers and through the sale of arts and crafts made by
the children in the after school club, at Dahab community market.
The build is set to take place from January 1-7
2015, and there is still time to sign up if you would like to support
a worthwhile project while soaking up some winter sun (go to
www.econtact.be to find out
more)!
In the seven years it has
been in operation, Habiba Community has gone from strength to
strength. Although Maged is not a PDC holder, and did not set out to
create a permaculture project per se, the principles of
permaculture are evident in a lot of what he has done; and
furthermore, his goal of achieving a sustainable and resilient
community is the essence of what permaculture is about. The success
of the farm speaks for itself, and the farm manager (Tha’er) is a
superbly skilled technician, with a lot to teach about arid zones
farming. They have a growing awareness of permaculture design as a
strategy that could be of real benefit to the community and are eager
to learn more, to apply design principles to existing projects, to
innovate and experiment, and to host courses: building local capacity
as well as gaining international attention and financial support for
their work.
Habiba is open to receiving
volunteers all year round, and it is a wonderful place to relax, let
the sound of the sea fill your ears and the quiet, green growing
energy of their desert farm transport you to a vision for a
sustainable and abundant future.
Maged Al Said (left) with
farmer Abu Rami (2nd from right) at a desert farm that
Habiba Community helped establish between Nuweiba and Dahab
Find out more and keep updated at
www.habibaorganicfarm.com
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