Berber Carpets – Not Your Average Engineer

Moving on from Tabarka, we wound our way up into the northwestern mountains of Tunisia. Known as the Kroumirie Mountains, its one of the few areas in Tunisia to get significant rainfall and, occasionally, snow! We stopped off at Ain Draham, the mountain station of Tunisia. The town sits at about 1000 meters nestled at the top of the pass on the road between Tabarka and Jendouba. Between Ain Draham and Tabarka, the road winds its way within about 500 meters of the border with Algeria. In Ain Draham, you can gaze across the valley to Algeria.

The entire region is filled with cork forests. We spied several trees that had been freshly harvested. To harvest the cork bark off of a cork tree, one makes a circular cut at the top and bottom of the trunk and one slit all the way down the length of the tree. Be sure to be careful not to cut all the way through the bark, as the inner layers transport nutrients up and down the trunk. I’m told that a cork tree can be harvested once every ten years or so.

In Ain Draham, our main goal was to see the women’s carpet cooperative that one of our guide books talked about. After some hiking around, we finally found it. The place mainly handles traditional Berber carpets with a few more modern designs. In the end, I bought a carpet and a bunch of carpet squares. Giovanna bought two carpets, some carpet squares, some knitted sweaters and gloves and hats and whatnot, and maybe a few other things. Heather bought some carpet squares and some knitted goods. We packaged all of the carpets together into a huge roll that just barely fit into a burlap feed sack. I lashed the roll under my backpack. Since we were taking louages everywhere, we had to be mobile. Looking back on it, we were rather insane. Those carpets must have weighed 20 kilos!