A Visit to Goumori and Toura

Last week, I biked 45 miles west of my village to visit the Peace Corps volunteers in Toura and Goumori. This trip affords me the opportunity to talk about that region and the work that those volunteers are doing. Between the three of us, we represent three of the four Peace Corps sectors present in Benin (health, environment, English teaching, and business).

The volunteer in Goumori is an environmental action volunteer. He does not have a workplace that he can go to every day (as I do), so he is left to his own devices and schedules his time as he chooses. He makes appointments throughout the week to help villagers and gardening groups in their gardens and teach families how to build mud stoves (which burn fuel, such as wood, more efficiently than other stoves). He has an example garden of his own next to his house where he models how to use natural insecticide (made from the leaves of the neem tree) and the use of compost as fertilizer.

He explained that cash crops like corn and beans tend to be grown during the rainy season, whereas the dry season is best for more exotic vegetables like lettuce and eggplant, which cannot withstand the heavy, monsoon-like rains. The major limitation in the dry season is water. Once the water runs out, gardeners can no longer grow these vegetables. To alleviate this problem, the volunteer is applying for a grant to introduce drip-line irrigation in the village. This irrigation system uses drastically less water than standard watering practices, so it would extend the growing season by stretching out the availability of water.  In addition to the economic boon that would result for the gardener, this would benefit the health of the entire community by extending the availability of these nutritious foods.

This volunteer has several other projects underway, such as a moringa garden and an environmental/English club at the middle school. He is also starting a latrine construction project. As in Sonsoro, few people in his village have access to latrines. Instead, they defecate in the bush. This compromises the health of the entire community because diseases that are present in their excrement may end up back in their drinking water or may even be transported to their food by flies. Therefore, the volunteer has assembled a committee of community leaders to plan the construction of family latrines using Peace Corps and village funding. Family latrines are preferred over public ones because experience has shown that they have a higher rate of use.

The other volunteer I visited is an English teaching volunteer in Toura. She teaches and co-teaches English classes in her village's middle school. English teaching is the most structured sector in Benin, so her work as a teacher fills her days. Still, as an ambitious volunteer, she is hoping to branch out into other projects, especially when school lets out for the summer. She is already writing a grant to construct additional classrooms for the school. One of the most remarkable things about visiting her was her level of Bariba. She speaks it fairly fluently and can scarcely take ten steps in village without being lured into a conversation by a villager.

Below are some photos of Goumori:

A crocodile

A man checking a fish trap

The brickworks by the river

Brightly-colored, somewhat metallic-looking insects

The volunteer and his garden at home