A Trip to Benin

We just got back from a really fun trip to Benin.  We attended the Global Shea Alliance’s annual conference.  We met a bunch of people in the Shea industry.  There were people from all aspects of the industry in attendance , from the pickers to the international buyers. Most of the time we were helping with logistics and registrations, but we were able to attend some informational sessions. The sessions were about all aspects of Shea production including sessions on Shea tree management, financing, cosmetics, and improving Shea nut quality.

 

There were several cosmetics sessions, teaching women to develop new products with their butter. 

 

Since there were people who spoke either English or French, there were translators for each speaker.   We got to wear cool head sets to hear the translation.  Don’t worry this is just a funny picture, Scott is really not trying to bring back the 70’s. 

     

A trade show accompanied the conference.  Women from Ghana, Burkina Faso,  Benin, Togo, and Nigeria were able to promote their hand made shea products.  Some of the products included shea butter, shea soap, shea cream, and shea oil.  We also got some amazing honey roasted groundnuts as well. 

We also managed to have a little fun as well. On the second to last night of the conference they had a cocktail party by the pool that over looked the beach. They provided the attendees with free drinks, which included champagne in real glass steamware and not in a plastic sachet.

Six other Ghana volunteers also attended the shea conference with us.

There were Peace Corps volunteers from Togo, Benin, and Guinea. It was fun talking to volunteers from other countries and hearing the similarities and differences of their experiences to ours.

We ate extremely well both at the conference and at the restaurants. And yes, that is broccoli, this is the first broccoli any of the volunteers in Africa  have had since we left the US. It was a fight between us PCV’s for the broccoli.