Deadliest Journeys - Benin: Cotton At All Costs
In northern Benin, each year from October to January, DRAMANE and ZACHARI, drivers of rattling trucks survive only to the rhythm of the cotton harvest. Like them, hundreds of drivers are trying to profit from this white gold which represents nearly 40% of BENINs exports to rich countries. But in this very poor country, the cultivation of cotton dramatically impoverishes the soils of the countryside… Because the immaculate flower requires astronomical quantities of water to grow… water which in Benin is sorely lacking for the inhabitants who walk for kilometers on foot to find some… In this painful context, ZACHARI fights to load the meager cotton crops with a rolling wreck… DRAMAN he is seven days a week stuck behind the wheel of a huge truck, a «TITAN». He rushes to the ground, ignoring the pedestrians to deliver the port of COTONOU as quickly as possible. Even if his meager salary forces him to live on a small business, he is not the most miserable like those they meet on the road: The farmers and their children who work only to survive, the women who break stones under the blazing sun or the dockworkers who are paid twenty cents to carry a 200 kilogram bale of cotton.
