How My Chakchouka Came to Life

Safouane Ben Haj Ali
Oct 22
2 min read

Narrow cobblestone alley with whitewashed walls in the Medina of Tunis, Tunisia.

It started in a kitchen in Tunis, olive oil on the table, clay cups that didn’t match.

I was trying to find a way to live slowly again, to make sense of what I’d seen abroad, what I’d lost at home, and what I still wanted to protect.

There were no investors, no launch plan.

Just a belief that Tunisia already held what the world was missing: honesty, handwork, and rhythm, it only needed a system to hold it.

The Unseen Shapes What We Build

When you grow up learning to read what’s unspoken, you learn to notice what’s overlooked.

Over time, that sensitivity turns into attention, to what lasts, what repeats, what holds.

I noticed what stayed: my mother’s foutas folded in the same drawer, the smell of olive-oil soap, the tea that always brought everyone back to the table.

Those details built the foundation of My Chakchouka, a place where the quiet things, the useful things, the handmade things are finally seen for what they are.

Between Worlds Becomes a Bridge

I lived between languages, between countries, between the warmth of one parent and the quiet of another.

That middle ground became my map.

My Chakchouka lives in that same in-between: between the local and the global, between the craftsman’s bench and the digital store.

It translates without diluting, so someone in Oslo or Melbourne can hold something from Kairouan and feel its truth without explanation.

Care Turns Into Structure

I learned what happens when care has no structure.

That kind of care can wear you down, unless you turn it into design.

My Chakchouka became a way to care without breaking: fair pay for artisans, transparent pricing, slow logistics, honest storytelling. Love, rewritten as a working system.