80 steps

by Davide Orioli (Italy)

I didn't expect to find Benin

… Seventy-eight, Seventy-nine, Eighty! The lady reaches again for the rusty old truck and dumps the content of the overhead tray into the big container. Then she turns and starts walking the opposite direction, towards the shore. It is only 9am and she already repeated this action almost a hundred times today. Yesterday she did 300, and the same the day before, and before; this because Bertille is a "Ramasseuse de sable". Her job is to carry the sand that men collect from the bottom of the bay, and load it into the lorry parked a mere fifty meters inland; it will be used for construction. It’s not the best quality, but there is no alternative, no other sand to be found in Benin. - Bertille! Bertille! Vient ici, il y a un monsieur qui voudrait te parler. The local translator calls her. As Bertille approaches I can realize how young she is, probably in her early twenties. From afar, she looked older. It must be because of her posture ruined by the weight of the wet sand that day by day, 80 steps at a time, bent her legs and pressed her spine. There are already wrinkles on her face, caused by the violent equatorial sun. Just behind the last mound of sand, her three children are playing with the kids of the other sand ladies. A "Maman" is trying to gather them all as it’s time to learn some French. Life in Dantokpa is very harsh. Bertille is one of the forty thousand people living here, in the largest market of Western Africa. A market that is actually a slum in disguise, where less than half of the residents die before they will turn 30. Still, it’s the main attraction of Cotonou, with its colours, smells, people. That is why I’m here. Bertille is not from here. She is a Vidomegon: born in the north of the country, was sent to the big city when she was 14, to be taken care of by some dubious relatives. She ended in Dantokpa like all the forgotten people with no hope: exploited kids, cripples, twins, orphans, albinos, all those deemed cursed in the local Voodoo culture. - A fon Gandjia. She greets in Fongbe, the local language. With the help of the translator, she tells how she ended there, looking for a job that would allow her to survive without the need to steal. For walking ten hours per day the same 80 steps up and down the bay, she earns 1500 CFA Franc. It’s two dollars and a half. Enough to buy some rice and spices for her and the kids. The oldest son is five and already helping, selling tomatoes in the market. I am obsessed with numbers, so while talking to Bertille I calculate how many steps she walks every day: 80 up, 80 down, 30 times per hour, ten hours per day. It’s 48,000 steps. I smile, bitterly. - Pourquoi il rigole? - Well, in my country doctors tell people to walk at least ten thousand steps per day to be healthy. As the local translates, Bertille giggles; they exchange a small conversation in Fongbe. - She says she’s going to live very long then. Bertille walks back towards her task, and I am amazed by the beauty of the sun still rising over the bay, right behind those ladies, stuck on this 80 steps prison and slowly making a dent on another sandy hill. This bright morning is anticlimactic: if this was a movie, the weather would be somber, to match the uncertainty and the struggle of Bertille and the other Ramasseuses. Soon it will be so. July will end, the rainy season will come, the job will get even harder. Malaria will take its usual toll; one out of five kids will die in Dantokpa, like the year before. And the one before. And before.