Breaking Up the Band

January 11 - 12

Day #15 – Started: Save                               Ended: Ouesse                                 Distance Covered: 56 km

Day #16 – Started: Ouesse                          Ended: Parakou                                 Distance Covered: 107 km

Highlights

• More inselbergs (mini-mountains)
• Charcoal production
• Bike team parts ways

Click on the images below to enlarge

Coming back north, we started

seeing more of the mini-mountains

this 

area is famous for.  Turns

out the 

technical term for the

g

eological 

formations are

"inselbergs" 

Cassava drying along the
highway.  Many people

use the flat, exposed

shoulder of the road to

dry their produce

Monuments greeting incoming
travelers coming to Parakou

Travelling north of Save took us through the very center of Benin, which is surprisingly open and fairly uninhabited.  The two major highways in the country that run north-to-south diverge in Dassa (just south of where we started), and the space between the two of them has pretty much been left alone.

This isn’t to say that there is no activity in the area; we saw plenty of make-shift quarries, fields, and woodlots; but not a ton of people.  In fact, about 20 kilometers north of Save, the land started to look pretty desolate.  It may just be the time of the year, but the land was extremely dry and windswept.  It’s very different from the western side of the Collines Department where I live, which seems to be filled with far more trees.

Charcoal

Even though the difference in the landscape could just be chalked up to natural environmental conditions (such as a different soil type), it’s a bit concerning to see such a difference in the number of trees in the area.  It seemed like constant brush fires combined with massive amounts of charcoal production (which involves felling trees and then smoldering them into coals) might be providing the perfect ingredients for a recipe of desertification and degradation of the land.  This could just be the concerned environmentalist in me talking, though.

After visiting some fellow volunteers in this region (who turn out to be outstanding chefs!), our team deviated from the back-roads and rejoined the main highway on our way to the city of Parakou.  Unfortunately, this was the last stretch of the journey that all four members of our crew could be together for.  The three girls that I have been travelling with had to return to their respective villages today, so that they could continue their work saving babies, filling gardens with loads of bountiful produce, and turning artisans into business gurus.  The past two weeks have been so amazing because of them, and it’s certainly not going to be the same continuing on alone.

The team!

Don’t worry, the trip isn’t over.  I’m going to keep pushing on and continue heading north.  Over the next few days I will be making my way up to the city of Kandi, and then eventually to the Niger border and the town of Malanville.  More to come soon!

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