Morning starts with going to get visa for Benin at the Benin Embassy. We all had only transit visa for 48 hours, so we had to extend. Application was quickly, but they had to keep our passports until the next day. Joachim was happy about the trash dividends he found in the dustbins of the embassy.
Then money exchange, which is not possible without passport. Fortunately, we had Monique with us, so she could do it for us. The problem was, that as a local woman, she only could change a maximum of Eur 1.000,- at a time. After a long, long time of waiting, each of us finally got our exchange money for Eur 200,- each.
Manuel got the contact of a woman from Germany, who spent the last 20 years in Cotonou, works at the German Embassy, runs a small boutique – and is supposed to be somehow involved into recycling.
The address was near the Brasserie, where Manuel´s girl friend is working, next doors we found a nice internet café, run by a woman from Morocco. We went to the boutique, and waited until it opened.
Carola Kipp was the right contact for us. She came to Benin as a social worker, and soon got involved into waste management projects. She told us, that the city of Benin had bought a large piece of land in the swamps around Cotonou, and all the waste was put 1 m under the earth, one line after the other. That there was a project making compost out of organic waste, because it was not easy to get good soil for gardening. And she mentioned the women´s project we had found on Sunday – the headquarter was in the same street as the boutique. We went there, and the Canadian boss was in the middle of a meeting, but handed us over to a young woman – Jaqueline -, who told us to come at 9 a.m. the next day, she would show us everything.
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