Tessenei and Ali Ghidier

During the colonial period both Tessenei and Ali Ghidier were  the center of a vast agricultural development project using the enormous quantity of waters of the Gash river streaming from the Eritrean highlands toward the Nile and it vanish in the Sudanese arid plains, without reaching the Nile.  The project dates back to 1905 when its  first feasibility studies was forwarded by an Italian engineer called Nicola Coles. Works started in 1924 and included: a small dam and a tiny lake to store water  (inaugurated in 1928) and numerous other works and a net of water irrigation canals  to irrigate  an approximately 10,000 hectares of land. An Italian agricultural-industrial company SIA (Sociate Impres Africain) wan this major concession: The main crop was  cotton,  a variety of Sakellaridis, the same as cultivated in Egypt and the entire production was exported to Italy where it enjoys  the  customs facilities. A plant for the treatment of cotton, a large mill for the processing of seeds, a power plant and a workshop complete the work.  a modern factory for spinning and weaving cotton Tessenei. The events of the war that led to the independence of Eritrea caused the destruction of the works of colonization and the closure of the Asmara.
The Village of Ali Ghidier was chosen a field camp for the project. A big workshop and store for agricultural was build , with four leading Italian directors in charge of its administration, field engineering all living there. A very strange system for supervising the plantation was running,  by the so called blatas. These blatas were brought with their family ties and kin from far areas as Keren. 
During the war of independence, the Eritrean town of Tessenei, given its proximity to the borders of the Sudan, Eritreans from which the insurgents receive weapons and supplies, was repeatedly bombed and was the subject of fighting, but it was also the first to be there liberated. 
Tessenei is located 45 kilometres from the Sudanese border and approximately 115 kilometres beyond Barentu. Tessenei is a population center for the western area, a frontier town with about 18,000 people from various ethnic backgrounds. The market place buzzes with nomadic traders, Tigrayan merchants and returnees from Sudan. The main square in front of the mosque is abuzz with many kinds of different trade, including tailors, cafés, bars and other shops.
There is a busy exchange market where the Saudi Rial and the Sudanese Pound are exchanged to Eritrean Nakfa's and the food in the 'souk' area has a distinctly Sudanese flavour. Tessenei is one of the reception points for returnees from the refugee camps in the Sudan who then proceed to other locations.
On the outskirts of Tessenei to the north are a couple of hills from which there are exceptional views of the lowlands and the mountains inside Sudan. 10 kilometres to the west of the city is the Barattolo cotton plantation at Ali Ghider where Hedareb tribes and 1500 ex-fighters and their families farm cotton, sesame and sorghum. Ali Ghider is an old Italian frontier village, still containing a few Italian relics.
Tessenei itself was liberated in 1988, having suffered extensive damage during the Eritrean war of liberation (1961 -1991). Outside Tessenei just beyond Haykota, is a monument to Idirs Awate. He fired the first shots in the liberation struggle in September 1961.
During the rainy season (July to September) most areas around Tessenei are impassable, but the recently constructed asphalt road from Barentu to Tessenei guarantees a comfortable trip by road to this border village. Daily buses leave to both Kasala in Sudan, Barentu and Asmara, the 

The name Tessenei with the diminutive of Seney, or Teseney, is not originally tygrinià but Tigrayit, the poeple of western Eritrea forced to live in Sudan by war. In 1929, it  was called Village of Gasperini (named after the former governor of Eritrea, a native of Treviso). Tessenei, is divided into several "Hillas" or districts / quarters, inhabited by different ethnic groups. There is in fact the Hilla Tokrur (or Hillat Takarin), the original population of Nigeria (a language very similar to that spoken in Biafra, Nigeria), the Hillat  Sudan (or Hillat Soudan) Hillat Halabit (inhabited by Beni Amer, pastoralists); Hillat Somal (inhabited by Somalis, in the trading centre), built around a hill of granite blocks, just over 100 meter high, which separates it from the Hillat Takarin. There is small river that flows into the Gash: The stream Tadalay. Behind the hill runs an irrigation canal that takes water from the Gash,  called Tur-a, and carries the waters from the Gash to the lands cultivated with cotton, next to  the village Ali Ghidir. The water supply is solved, thanks to a reservoir fed by a very old group of pumps (from the early 30s) that draw water from the sands of the Gash. It is a huge deep basin, built on top on the small hill of granite, surrounded by old Baobab trees. At the side of this large basin-tank, there was the Italian Civil Hospital, built in the 20s, which for many years, has served a huge area near Tesseney, as the villages of Haicota, Galluy (Gallug), Ali-Ghidir, Talatahascer, Sabderat (villages  bordering  Sudan), Suttumò, Had Elit (village populated by about 1,000 individuals who speak a language all their own.