Dean's Peace Corps Photos of Benin
Welcome to Dean's Benin Photo Page!
Bienvenue à la page des photos béninoises
All photos were taken in 1995 or 1994 in Nikki, Benin.
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Go to Page 2 and more photos!
Here I am with Zoobera in front of a case - or small hut. Zoobera is 17 years old and attends Nikki's only high school. Her family makes about $50 per month.
Here is my house, the only white one in town. It was built with mud bricks and cement plaster and had a corrugated tin roof. I had electricity for 15 hours of the day but no running water. There was a small indoor area for bucket showers and my latrine was behind the house. My kitchen contained a kerosene refrigerator and a propane stove. Villagers delivered water from local wells and pumps that I used for cooking, drinking, and washing, and bathing.
This is a picture of the woman who cooked my lunch and dinners. Her name is Evelyn Elecho and her husband Emmanuel was one of my co-workers at the local social center. I was practically a member of the Elecho family; I ate, worked, and played with them and their 3 kids. In this picture Evelyn is washing a neighbor's baby. I gave Evelyn an enlargement of this photo and she was thrilled! Photos are extremely rare luxuries in Nikki, and she had never seen an enlargement before.
This picture shows the remains of a cow recently slaughtered in the village of Gnoun. Male villagers slaughter cows, goats, and sheep in open air. Since no one can afford refrigeration, meat often sits in 90 degree weather for hours before being purchased. Flies also swarm the meat and carcass. Although this may seem shocking to people in the modern world, it is a daily phenomenon for hundreds of millions of our world's inhabitants.
This boy lived across the street from my house ( which is on the right hand side ). His family had a father, two wives and 10 children and earned $30 per month from peanut, cotton, and yam farming. The kids from his family and my compound would often play soccer ( barefoot ) in this road with flat rubber balls. Neighboring young girls would also sweep this road every morning. Peace Corps volunteers were always perplexed by this seemingly counter-productive behavior - how do you sweep a dirt road? But they swept roads not to remove dirt, but to give it a nice, well groomed look.
Don't forget to visit page 2!
