Khaled Mohamed and Mohamed Abd ElAziz are two best friends working as farmers in the Oasis of El Kharga, Egypt. They share several commonalities other than being illiterate and having hearing impairments, as both men are married and both have four children.

The two were also born into families of farmers where they learned all their skills as they watched and imitated the work of their family members and fellow farmers growing up. As they became farmers themselves, they started to rely on palm trees and dates to earn their livelihoods.

However, they are faced with many challenges to maintain their crop production. They recall that an outbreak of red palm weevil insects in their farms in 2017 gave a big blow to their production and greatly affected them financially. Khaled and Mohamed also added that the scarcity of water resources in the Oasis, which is completely surrounded by a desert, also makes it quite difficult to grow their palm trees.

“The situation was very critical then. We could barely produce any dates and the harvest was insufficient. Even the small amount of dates we did produce were not the best quality. It was very difficult as we could not even provide our families financially with their basic needs,” said Mohamed.