Desperately looking to earn daily wages, hundreds of Moroccan women from different ages up to 60 years old carry a load of goods across the border to their home in Fnideq, a rural village in Tetouan, Morocco — about 4 miles from the border. An unfinished miserable image of dozens of Moroccan women, along with a few men, work as human transporters to secure daily substance and living for their children.

Residents from Morocco’s Tetouan region don’t need visas to enter Ceuta's industrial area located in the north part of Morocco and being occupied and controlled by Spain for centuries, the city is about a two-minute walk from the border. Porters cross over from Tetouan, Morocco and head straight to El Tarajal, the vast manufacturing complex just across it, to load up on items from various vendors — selling a plethora of products — to bring back to Morocco.  

When porters transport items on their person, vendors avoid a customs tax and the workers receive a small payment for their service. 

After years of backbreaking toil, Moroccan women from the bordering area near the occupied area of Ceuta now fears being reduced to begging in the street because of Morocco's closure of its border with a Spanish enclave to thousands of "porter women".

The impact has been felt on both sides of the frontier, with the Moroccan porters who lugged duty-free Spanish goods left out of work and shops closing as livelihoods dry up for traders.

It's just a 15-minute walk, but these Moroccan mothers, sometimes along with their daughters and sons make sure to arrive the night before, around 10 p.m., when they start to line up at the metal gates that swing open around 6 a.m. Every morning. As porters, their main goal is to transport blankets, baby goods, car tires and more back and forth  and all carried on the backs — up to seven times a day — between Spain and Morocco. 

These women share a common story of struggle: Each has a limited education, comes from rural communities in Morocco near the Spanish border, are either divorced or widowed, hated or divorced, nevertheless married women also could be performing this activity. All of them are obliged to obtain economic earnings to support children. 

In a move aimed at curbing the entry of contraband, Morocco recently stopped porters from crossing due to border issues, leaving thousands of porter women in fear of being reduced to begging in the street.

In fact the majority of Moroccan porter women live in extreme poverty and do not have a profession other than smuggling and many of them live in rental homes, burdened with lots of heavy responsibility for raising their children and paying housing expenses to spending on their parents and families. “There is nothing for these women in Morocco. There is no medical attention, no education, no opportunities."

With your kind help Dar Al-Andalus association in Belgium and Morocco aims to provide the following food basket as a support sufficient for 1 month for a number of 100 Women with their family and those living with parents only