Defying the artificial borders that divide them, a “solidarity caravan” of North African activists embarks on an unlikely trip to visit Tunisian communities fighting social and environmental injustice. As their white bus skirts across southern Tunisia’s arid landscape, they stop by three towns deeply affected by the country’s rabid phosphate industry and one where farmers have successfully taken back their lands. Not coincidentally, these towns are also the cradles of the 2011 revolutions which swept through their countries. For many in this caravan, these uprisings failed to not only confront oppressive socio-economic conditions in which their people lived for decades, but also environmental ones. Like many other places in the world, North Africa, has seen its resources plundered by extractivist industries which plow through the natural landscape. Often anchoring itself by making poor communities dependent on polluting industries, extractivism maintains the accumulation of capital by sacrificing people and nature. It destroys the ecosystems in its path, displacing people and leaving those who remain with nothing more than toxic waste. For this solidarity caravan, these polluting industries are just one aspect of the neocolonialism that subjugates their peoples. Each of the four episodes focuses on a different town: the polluted coastal oasis of Gabes; the dusty phosphate mining towns of Redeyef and Oum Laarayes and, finally the hope-filled experience of the collectivised lands in Djemna.
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