Rain & Cheap Oil

It's rainy season right now in southern Bénin, and when it rains, it doesn't matter what you were planning to do, or what you needed to do, or what you wanted to do- everything gets paused until the rain stops. Because when it rains it's not usually a light sprinkle or drizzle, it tends to be a downpour that will soak into your bones within 10 seconds. Traveling very far in the rain isn't really an option, since cars are rare here in Ouidah, and having your face pelted with rain at 30 miles/hour while riding on a moto is not appealing. The occasional brave or desperate person can be spotted making their way through the storm, but mostly the streets are deserted as everyone dashes into their houses or businesses and the roads gradually transform into lakes and rivers for the next few hours. Life stops for a while, as the entire city mutually understands that nothing will happen until the storm is over.

Friday it rained harder than I had seen it rain since I got here, so my roommates and I spent the day trapped inside, watching low-budget films produced in Ghana and taking pictures of the people passing by who had the misfortune of getting caught in the storm. Definitely a relaxing day, but when it finally cleared up late in the afternoon, leaving the house was a welcomed option.

Saturday was spent in Cotonou, the business capital of Bénin, shopping at some of the markets and picking up my parents at the airport, who flew in for the week from Mali where they normally live. Cotonou may have a few more luxuries than Ouidah does, like Lebanese restaurants and ATMs, but the pollution and traffic were so bad that I spent the day really glad that I'm living in Ouidah instead.

One of our stops was the fabric market, where we were stunned by the vivid colors and spent a lot of time haggling with the Indian and Nigerian shop-keepers, who evidently hold a monopoly on the fabric industry here.

In fact, much of Bénin's economy is impacted by its Nigerian neighbors. Nigerians have lived up to their reputation of being business minded and even have their own market in Cotonou completely Nigerian-run, where most of the interactions are in English, which is the official language of Nigeria.

The oil industry here is also influenced by Nigeria. If you've ever read stories in the news about oil being stolen out of the oil pipelines in the Niger Delta and wondered where that oil went, I have an answer for you! Ok, you probably haven't actually pondered this subject much, but I still have an answer anyway.

It's smuggled across the border into Bénin, where it's sold to merchants who line the roads and sell it to the moto and car drivers by pouring it into their vehicles through funnels. Since the entire industry is based on stolen oil, gas is cheap here, resulting in lots of pollution, especially in Cotonou, and little incentive to improve public transportation. And as long as public transportation is insufficiently meeting the needs of the public and oil is cheap and available, personal vehicles will be driven in mass, which continues the demand for cheap, illegal oil, which helps continue the supply of cheap, illegal oil. But at the same time, the “legal” oil companies in Nigeria, who are mostly foreign-owned, are not exactly pure and innocent either, which means the profits from much of the Nigerian oil does not go back to Nigerians.
The industry is fairly complex, and is only one example of how fluid the borders are around here, with people and their goods crossing them regularly.

Gas waiting to be sold: