In Temezret, a village in the arid land of southeastern Tunisia spread across rolling hilltops, locals passing each other in the khaki stone alleyways greet each other without shaking hands. In a cafe at the summit of the mountain the village is built on, villagers sit at a distance from one another. Even at a wake service for a villager who has died, locals keep a little extra distance while joining to eat couscous.

Temezret is in southeast Tunisia, a historically marginalized region bordering Libya at the gate of the Sahara Desert. Despite the region’s impoverishment, swathes of the southeast have remained totally free of coronavirus, registering zero cases of infection. This while regional neighbors like Egypt and Algeria have been seriously impacted by the virus.

The village is one of the last homes of the Amazigh people in Tunisia, the indigenous inhabitants of North Africa. Amazigh language speakers in Tunisia have traditionally been rebellious and suspicious of outsiders after centuries of invasion by Romans, Arab settlers, French colonizers and others. Amazigh people in the region have thus often been on the lookout for potential invaders — like the virus.

The isolation of their community and the surrounding area, however, has served as a buffer to the coronavirus while the pandemic rages around the world.