PST: Missérété

July-September

My host siblings

PST (pre-service training) was a whirlwind.  My sector, environmental action (EA), was placed in Missérété, a small town outside of Porto-Novo in southeastern Benin.  Living with host families, the twelve of us were kept busy 8-5 Monday through Friday, and even half a day on Saturdays.  Our days were filled with language, culture and technical trainings, and our nights and weekends with family life.  Amongst the things I learned during PST include how to cook pâte (imagine corn flour play dough) and sauce gumbo (a gelatinous okra sauce), how to do my laundry à la main (one load usually takes me an hour and a half), and Fon, one of the most widely spoken local languages. 

Maman Josette and my little sister, Guenelle

Learning how to make sauce

My host brother, Claude

A Beninese "grocery store"

Guenelle and me

Learning how to graft mangoes

Tech training was by far the most enjoyable: we started our own gardens, built mud stoves, made compost piles, learned how graft fruit trees, and got to work with gardeners in the area.  We also started putting into practice participatory development skills such as seasonal calendars and community mapping.  I was also introduced to polygamy, vodun (voodoo), and the sweltering African sun.  Furthermore, we had the opportunity to spend the first two weeks of August at our permanent sites in order to scope out our future communities and learn more about our roles the next two years – more on that later.

Amaranth from our garden

 A little note on EA: our main goals include increasing food security, reforestation efforts and environmental education.  Based on these objectives, our main activities include gardening, small animal husbandry (rabbits, chickens, goats), tree planting and environmental clubs at local schools.  Also, I feel fortunate to be part of such a great group of EA volunteers and trainers.

The EA gang and our first mud stove

A few facts about Benin (for those that are interested):

(adapted from one of my term papers this past year)

Benin is a small country located in sub-Saharan West Africa.  It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso and Niger to the north, and the Bight of Benin to the south.  It has a landmass of approximately 42,000 square miles and a population of 9.1 million as of 2011, making it one of the most densely populated countries in West Africa.  Its history is closely linked with the slave trade as it is located on what was once known as the ‘slave coast’ due to the large number of slaves that were captured and shipped to the New World from the region during the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  When the slave trade ended in 1848 Benin, then the Kingdom of Dahomey, became a protectorate of France.  It was not until 1960 that Dahomey officially gained its independence from France, transitioning into a period of political instability marked by a series of military coups.  In 1975 it was given its current name, The Republic of Benin.  In 1990 Benin was the first African country to successfully transition from a dictatorship to a pluralistic political system and it continues to enjoy a stable and democratic government to this day.  French remains one of three national languages, which also include the local languages of Fon and Yoruba along with a number of regional tribal languages.

Nearly 70 percent of Benin’s population relies on subsistence farming as their main source of income.  In total agriculture accounts for 32 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and cotton alone makes up 40 percent of the country’s total exports.  Palm oil is the country’s second largest export.  Moreover, thirty percent of Benin’s total land area is under agricultural production, an increase of 4.4 percent in the decade between 1990 and 2000.  Additionally, the country is highly dependent on livestock production, which accounts for 7.3 percent of Benin’s GDP, or $76 million per annum.  Domesticated livestock species under production, listed in order of prevalence, include sheep and goats (2 million), cattle (1.6 million), poultry (1.2 million), and pigs (300,000) and 16 percent of Benin’s total landmass is under pasture.  Thirty-three percent of the population falls under the international poverty line of $1.25 per day.

As of the 2002 census, the most popular religions in Benin are Roman Catholicism, Islam, and Vodun (or Voodoo).  Vodun is an animistic religion, i.e. one in which plants, animals and even inanimate objects are thought to be imbued with a spiritual essence.  It was outlawed in the country soon after Benin gained independence from France, but has since been declared an official religion (in 1996) and is now openly practiced.

There are two national parks in Benin.  Pendjari National Park located in the northwest corner of the country on 681,000 acres and W National Park that follows the Niger River through Niger, Benin and Burkina Faso in a ‘W’-shaped path.  Over 1.3 million acres of the latter park lie in Benin proper.  Both parks are buffered by hunting zones.  Additionally, both Pendjari and W have areas within them that are recognized as Ramsar sites of wetland importance due to the fact that they contain a representative and rare example of natural wetlands within the region and their preservation is seen as necessary for conserving the biodiversity of the area.  National parks are extremely important for protecting the vast number of wildlife species, and their habitats, present in Benin, which include lions, African elephants, hippopotami, African buffalo, warthogs, olive baboons, and Nile crocodiles, among others.  So excited to go visit them!