Benefits of Water-Harvesting Systems (Jessour) on Soil Water Retention in Southeast Tunisia

In this paper, we quantify the water balance of Jessour at the scale of agricultural plots. Jessour (plural of Jesr) are ancestral hydro-agricultural systems in the Dahar plateau (southeastern Tunisia). They consist of small dams built across wadis and gullies, which retain rainwater and sediments, hence enabling cropping. Despite arid climate conditions, Jessour allow the culture of the olive tree beyond its ecological limits. Weather monitoring stations were set up and soil moisture sensors installed down to a depth of 1.25 m in the soil in two neighboring gullies in the village of Zammour: one with a Jesr and one without. Laser granulometry and organic matter analyses were carried out on samples collected near the soil moisture sensors. Measurements were recorded from 28 September 2017 to 21 September 2018. From 10 to 12 November 2017, the region received 123.3 mm rainfall. The Jesr retained the equivalent of 410.3 mm of soil moisture to a depth of 1.25 m whereas the value in the gully was 224.6 mm. Throughout the summer of 2018, the soil available water capacity (AWC) remained above 55 mm in the Jesr, while it dropped to zero in the gully. Jessour are thus very suitable hydro-agricultural systems to face the climate changes concerning this fragile region, located in the transition zone between the semi-arid to arid Mediterranean region and the Sahara.

“A Small Story With Great Symbolic Potential”: Attempts at Fixing a Cemetery of Unknown Migrants in Tunisia

From the summer of 2015, as Europe faced the so-called “refugee crisis,” a cemetery in southeast Tunisia started gaining fame. Journalists, researchers, filmmakers, photographers, and activists began traveling to the coastal town of Zarzis to report on a burial site for the victims of the European Union’s border. They were welcomed by local actors, and in particular by Chamseddine, a former fisherman who over the years became deeply involved in these burials. Told through one man’s charitable commitment to provide dignity to those who died at the European Union’s liquid border, the cemetery was fixed as a place epitomizing both the deadly effects of migration policies and the compassion of simple citizens in the face of horror. Different individuals and groups also began organizing to materially fix the cemetery. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Zarzis between 2015 and 2018, this article explores the conceptual and practical acts of “fixing” surrounding the cemetery. These resulted in turning it into a focal symbol triggering moral and political discourses not only of empathy and hope but also of blame and responsibility, bringing to the fore the colonial and neocolonial legacies of the “refugee crisis.”