Kafr al-Sanabsah: Life and death at the mercy of daily labor

Mada

07-07-2025

Residents of the village of Kafr al-Sanabsah in Monufiya found themselves last week preparing coffins for 18 women and girls killed in a microbus crash. The vehicle was transporting them along the Regional Ring Road to work on desert farms. In a solemn funeral procession, thousands came out for the collective burial of the victims from the village — all between 14 and 22 years old. Since then, the village has remained in mourning.
By the time I arrived in Kafr Sanabsah, talk of the immediate causes of the crash — the road's dangerous conditions and questions of accountability — had already begun to fade.
In the mourning tents, what filled the air instead was rage at the daily wage system that governs life in the village, particularly for women. Each of the victims had set out that morning to make just LE130 for 12 hours of labor.
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'We fight over that 130,' Abeer, a farmworker, shouted at the funeral tent for Mayada, one of the crash victims who was just 18 years old.
As well as the tragedy of losing the victims, through the conversations with mourners I could feel a deeper crisis: that of lives taken in pursuit of LE130 and what that sum represents for a community becoming increasingly dependent on daily labor for its survival.
According to residents speaking to Mada Masr, agricultural land ownership in the village has become so fragmented over the decades that in many cases, families own little to nothing. At best, one or two family members work a small plot of the family's land, while the rest are forced to chase daily labor to cover expenses, especially as rising operational costs continue to eat away at the potential income from these small plots. Meanwhile, the village population has grown and now stands at over 22,000, according to the village mayor Mohamed Allam.
Most villagers agreed that women and girls make up the bulk of the agricultural workforce, while men tend to work in what they call 'with-his-arms' jobs — a term used to describe a range of informal work some consider unsuitable for women. This could include work in construction, carpentry, plastering or transporting goods on motorbikes — which is what Mayada's father used to do before his license expired and he was unable to renew it.
At the funeral, the women told versions of the same story over and over. It is the story of working in 'the mountain,' or 'the yellow land' as villagers call the reclaimed desert farms that stretch beyond Monufiya's black, fertile soils. This time, however, the story ended with Mayada and her peers losing their lives. The 'yellow land' referred to here includes reclaimed desert areas in Beheira Governorate and also in Sadat City, which falls under Monufiya's jurisdiction, according to Farag Gharib, Mayada's uncle, who was receiving condolences in the men's funeral tent.
When harvest time comes, work in the mountain splits into two categories: harvesting in the fields on one side, and sorting, packing, weighing and preparing the produce for export at packing stations.
As an unmarried woman, Mayada worked in the latter category, where shifts stretch later into the day than field work. 'I leave early because I go to the fields — I'm out at dawn and back by 2 pm,' Abeer says. 'Us married women come home early for the children and cooking. The unmarried girls leave at 6 or 7 am and don't get back until 8 pm,' she says, her voice rising in anger, 'Since the accident, I'm scared to go out. This morning I couldn't afford breakfast.'
The official daily wage for a farmworker in Kafr al-Sanabsah is LE200. But , LE20 goes to the labor contractor, and another LE50 is deducted from the total for transportation. 'If you go on your own [without a contractor], they cheat you out of your money and you don't get the whole sum,' one of the people attending the funeral said. 'My husband got paid less because he went on his own. They told him the tomatoes were rejected [by exporters].'
Contractors' control is further entrenched by the payment system: workers are not paid daily, but every 15 days.
Transport costs can also rise if there aren't enough passengers in the microbus, since the fare is typically divided among the riders. That's why, Abeer explained, the workers themselves often see overcrowding in the microbus as being in their own interest. But in practice, the rules around transportation aren't so straightforward. As the women at the funeral explain, cramming more passengers into the microbus doesn't always lead to a reduction in the LE50 transport fee. Among them were two of Mayada's peers, who had traveled the same morning in a different microbus from a neighboring village. They made it home safely from the Saad Station, where they worked that day, and learned of the fatal crash after they got home.
The two young women avoided speaking in detail about the working conditions at the station and its ownership.
Looking into the station reveals several companies operating under the same name: El-Saad for Export, El-Saad Fruit for Import and Export and El-Saad Company for Trading, Production, Sorting, Cooling and Freezing of Agricultural Crops.
One of Mayada's peers tells me that a family member confirmed to her that the crash occurred on the way to Beheira. This makes it likely that the destination was El Saad Company for trading and post-harvest processing, located in Idku, she says.
After graduating middle school, Mayada began working at the station year-round. Before this, she had only worked during the summer, as is common for many girls in the village. Summer typically brings a surge in labor, with students — both boys and girls — joining the workforce at the mountain during school holidays.
In contrast, the winter season draws fewer workers, which drives up daily wages to around LE150 after the different fees are paid. Still, one mourner noted that wages remain largely uniform across employers. 'They've all agreed on the rates,' said one. 'You won't find one paying LE130 and another LE140 — otherwise people would just switch. They're all the same.'
Toqa, another victim of the crash and Mayada's cousin on her mother's side, started working seasonally each summer after finishing her elementary schooling. She was under 15, her mother Sabah tells Mada Masr at her funeral.
Girls like Toqa take on summer work to help pay for continuing their education, especially once they reach secondary school. That was Toqa's hope, but her mother confronted her with the reality: thanaweya amma education — or even vocational diplomas — come with steep expenses, particularly for transportation, not to mention the cost of private tutoring.
These costs are largely due to the absence of secondary schools within the village itself. The nearest one, in the village of Sudud, requires a tuktuk ride.
There is only one middle school in Kafr al-Sanabsah, which naturally leads to overcrowded classrooms and a heavy reliance on private tutoring, a resident who works as a teacher tells Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.
For Toqa, that financial pressure translated into nearly LE1,500 a month in tutoring fees and external textbooks, according to her mother. 'We get the Takaful and Karama cash assistance, and it all goes to lessons — plus just as much again,' she said, her voice angry. 'The president who raises the price of everything for us can't fix the road?'
Another victim, Marwa, was also part of the summer workforce. She had been pursuing a diploma at a technical institute and hoped eventually to enroll in a commerce faculty, her father says while receiving condolences outside their home — just a few meters from Toqa's.
Grief-stricken, he spoke of how determined his daughter was to complete her education despite the family's financial hardship — especially after his health deteriorated and his already meager earnings from odd jobs, never more than LE200 per day, became even more uncertain.
Marwa's uncle joined in, his voice swelling with pride as he spoke of her and her peers. 'There's no one like our girls,' he said. 'Why do you think they go out to work? It's to help their families, not to mess around.' This sentiment echoed in many conversations throughout the village that day.
One relative of Toqa and Mayada was more blunt. 'Of course this isn't normal. More and more girls are forced to go out and work because of rising expenses. Last Eid, I saw a group of them heading out and asked one where she was going on Eid. She said, 'The daily wage is triple today, that's LE1,000 over three days. Do you expect us to miss a chance like that?' It wasn't like this a few years ago.'
That is why residents aren't just demanding jobs — they are calling for jobs for women, jobs that would allow them to stay in their village. Even the mayor Mohamed Allam believes that setting up a local sewing workshop could be a solution, as the idea of women not working in a rural village like Kafr al-Sanabsah is simply unrealistic.
For Shaimaa and Jana, two sisters who were also killed in the crash, the struggle to fund their education was shared. Shaimaa, the eldest of the two, had completed her diploma. Jana, who died before finishing middle school, would join her sister during summer breaks to work. Shaimaa, meanwhile, worked year-round, even before she graduated. She would go to work on weekends, and at times even skip school to earn money not only for her own education, but eventually to help cover Jana's as well.
Just a few meters away, the funeral tent for Malak was set up. Unlike the others, Malak had abandoned her education altogether. Rising living costs and her father's forced retirement from his job at Beshay Steel in Sadat City — due to a diabetes-related leg injury — left the family in need. The company paid him no severance, and Malak began working continuously to help make ends meet.
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At every funeral I visited, the prevailing mood was anger. It led a significant number of villagers to boycott a collective condolence gathering organized by the village mayor at his home, which was attended by the governor of Monufiya. Many residents said they refused to go because the governor failed to visit the victims' families in their homes, as tradition dictates. Others criticized the lack of organizational support from authorities during the funerals, which they felt turned the burial of 18 women and girls into a chaotic and undignified ordeal. The village's narrow pathways became choked with grieving residents, and the absence of the governor at the girls' funerals only deepened the resentment.
According to one eyewitness, the governor was on his way to pay home visits to the victims' families. But when he arrived in the village, a woman confronted him, saying, 'Now you come? After everything's been ruined?' He turned on his heel and left.
Allam did not respond to the criticism over the collective funeral, but when speaking with Mada Masr, he acknowledged all the grievances residents raised as reasons for their poverty — chief among them the lack of job opportunities and essential services. 'The health unit here is a disaster,' he said, referring to the village's severely under-resourced clinic, a view echoed by many villagers.
He added that he had tried to negotiate with officials to include Kafr al-Sanabsah in the government's Haya Karima initiative, but no decision had been made yet.
What Allam did express satisfaction about was the financial compensation for the victims' families. The Labor Ministry allocated LE300,000 for each victim, and the Social Solidarity Ministry added another LE200,000 per family. Business magnate Ahmed Ezz's charitable foundation contributed an additional LE100,000 per household.