Introduction

When we want to get perfumes, we are always keen to get them from the famous French brands: Chanel and Dior for example, but who would think that many of these perfumes originated –partly- from Egypt? Here is the story: about 97 kilometers to the north of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, there is a small village called “Shoubra Balola”; the village of jasmine as Egyptians call it. “Shoubra Balola” produces about half of the international production of jasmine and exports it to all countries, especially France to produce perfumes and other products of cosmetics.

How did it Begin? A Story of Success

How did the jasmine cultivation emerge in “Shoubra Balola”? Till the 1950s, the village was just cultivating traditional crops such as cotton, vegetables, fruits, etc. Some residents in the village who were travelling to France for trade and business trips could find opportunities to establish contracts with French perfume brands to cultivate jasmine for them. After some years and when they achieved clear success, the others started to imitate them and in a few decades, the village became the most fragrant one in Egypt. 

Busy but Happy: The Season of Harvest

The season of the harvest is the most important season in the village; everyone in the village works on picking jasmine flowers, even children and students join farms, in fact the money they earn makes them very keen to work. During the harvest, it is normal to see hundreds of small moving lights covering the village from midnight to dawn; this is the best time for picking the flowers. These lights are headlamps that all workers wear to help them see. To expand and diverse its production, and to meet the needs and tastes of the international market, the village began to cultivate other flowers such as lavender and the larch some years ago. For the villagers, jasmine means joy and delight because the season of harvesting jasmine and other flowers is also the season of marriage and paying debts. And the jasmine cultivation helps many poor people in the village to continue in education as well. 

Challenges that Villagers Face

Though they earn money from cultivating or picking jasmine, when the farm owners and workers see the high prices of perfume produced by European brands, they sell the jasmine at very low prices, which is unfair. This could be because they do not have good negotiation skills; another reason is that they export the jasmine paste in raw form, as they do not have the basis for manufacturing the jasmine paste in more advanced forms before exporting it. 

Conclusion

With the new generations of the village inhabitants, who are better educated, and who have a higher awareness about the international market, there could be some hope. Some of them already specialize in processing the flowers in better ways. Others are keen to consult international companies for financial and legal affairs so that they could have better positions in the negotiations while selling their products. In general, the people in the village expect better conditions with the younger generation. 

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