Benin: The Dark Side of “White Gold” | Deadliest Roads

Description

Every year, between October and January, in the north of Benin, Dramane and Zachari, drivers of rickety trucks, depend on the cotton harvest for their living. Like them, hundreds of drivers try to make money from the white gold that makes up nearly 40% of Benin’s exports to rich countries. However, in this desperately poor country, cotton-growing dramatically impoverishes the soil in the countryside. Because this spotless flower requires astronomical quantities of water to enable it to grow… water that the population of Benin cruelly lacks and must travel miles on foot in order to fetch. Against this difficult background, Zachari struggles to transport the meager harvest with a wreck on wheels. Dramane spends seven days a week tied to the wheel of a giant truck, a TITAN”. Foot to the floor, ignoring pedestrians, he races to deliver to the port of Cotonou as fast as he can. Even though his pittance of a wage forces him to live from petty dealing he is not the poorest of those he meets along his road. Farmers and their children work only to survive, women who break rocks in the burning sun or the dockers who are paid twenty cents to carry a bale of cotton that ways over 400 pounds.