bags of white stuff!

These photos were taken on our last trip from Cotonou to Parakou, just to the south of a town called Dassa. You might well wonder what is being sold in these white bags. Manioc is grown here in Benin, and two manioc products are gari and tapioca. You will probably have heard of tapioca – gari is a woodier substance which looks a lot like very fine sawdust! It is mixed with water and used as a staple, or simply mixed into a sauce to give more texture and some taste.

Everyone knows that this part of the country is THE place to buy gari and tapioca. When we first arrived I couldn't quite figure out how this worked. How can all these stands all sell enough to make a living? Well, simply because this is THE place to buy gari and tapioca, and everyone knows it! You can't drive past without seeing someone stopping to buy a few bags, and we often stop ourselves to buy some to give to friends as presents when we get back to the village. If you buy gari or tapioca elsewhere in the country it is either less good quality or else more expensive, so if you're making the trip you might as well stop and stock up!

It still makes me smile though, to drive past all these identical stalls, with just a name above them to distinguish them from the next one. But in case you're wondering, we have our favourite stall, "Les 3 Pneux", where if we buy 4 bags of tapioca they give us a free bag of gari!