Letters from West Africa
Day 12. Materials
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If you happened to read the previous post, you might remember a short story about the walls around the city made of clay. Clay is an important material in rural Benin and it is used in the most versatile ways for houses, ovens, decorations and of course pottery. In a Beninese household, there is a specifically shaped pot for each of the ingredients. A high pot with a wavy opening is for the cornflour and a smaller perfectly round pot is for the rice and couscous.
Besides clay, most of the materials used for construction are obtained from the immediate surroundings. The houses are often built of wood or clay with the fences made of intertwined palm leaves. The roofs are created with the dense stacking of straws making them naturally waterproof but also retaining good ventilation since often a gap is left between the walls and the roof. There is also a less traditional and easier variation of a waterproof roof made of plastic bags spread on the wooden grid and covered with palm leaves.
Despite the high use of natural materials, there is one commercial material that even the poorest Beninese have enough of. Plastic. Specifically, plastic bags. The small black plastic baggies, resembling those doggy-poop bags back at home, are used for everything from wrapping the freshly purchased dress at the market to carrying live crabs. Often, more than one bag is used due to their low quality and inevitably, the broken baggies end up around the village. They will disappear only when the trash pile is large enough to be burned, bringing a special kind of stink to the trash fire. Cheers, Anna
Fence made of palm leaves.
The roof inside of a hair salon.
House made of clay.
Straw roof at the market.
Making of string from long grass.
Building made of concrete.
Clay artist at work.
Decoration from red clay.