Friday was an exciting day. I(Mike) went out in the bush to an agricultural site. the first two pictures are of a "gas station" and a "Mini-mart" Benin style. These are a little ways out of town. The city of Contonou is pretty cosmopolitan, with regular gas stations (not mini marts). The yellow bottle in the middle is the bulk gas, the quart bottles in the lower right corner are to fill the gazillion motor-bikes that are the primary mode of transportation.
The next picture is of a "mini-mart" along the side of the road. I was surprised that it had everything, eggs, canned goods, etc. It was really amazing how much stuff they squeezed in a small area. 
The other pictures were of the rest of the trip out. As you can see it was really out in the boon-docks. But it was beautiful. The building picture is the agricultural training center we are building in conjunction with Bethesda, a local NGO (non-government organization), to provide training how to improve their crop production. The next pictures are the short trip to the "experimental farm". I looked at the local corn crops driving along and they were dry, brown and not in good shape at all. But at the training farm, the corn was 8-10 feet tall, green and looking good (the corn in the picture is 4 weeks old.. they
mixed rows of beans in the corn to provide the nitrogen to the corn, keep mulch on the ground to hold water (coconut husks act a sponges to hold the water.) The whole farm is organic. Their insecticide is other plants. A bug that is harmful to beans, does not like tomatoes, so they dry tomato leaves, shred them and scatter the leaves among the beans. Bugs (as they told us) run away. Sticks of a certain type of tree repel flying insects, so they stick small branches around the field to keep flying insects out. It is that type of education that will allow the local farmers to become self sustaining, producing everything they need in the area. The soil we saw was rich, good soil. It would be fun to come back in 5 
years to see the progress that is being made. When people support Mercy Ships, it is not only the blessing of healing we bring to the World's poor, we bring education to help the communities we serve overcome the root causes of the health problems they face, poor nutrition and sanitation for example.
The other pictures were of the rest of the trip out. As you can see it was really out in the boon-docks. But it was beautiful. The building picture is the agricultural training center we are building in conjunction with Bethesda, a local NGO (non-government organization), to provide training how to improve their crop production. The next pictures are the short trip to the "experimental farm". I looked at the local corn crops driving along and they were dry, brown and not in good shape at all. But at the training farm, the corn was 8-10 feet tall, green and looking good (the corn in the picture is 4 weeks old.. they
mixed rows of beans in the corn to provide the nitrogen to the corn, keep mulch on the ground to hold water (coconut husks act a sponges to hold the water.) The whole farm is organic. Their insecticide is other plants. A bug that is harmful to beans, does not like tomatoes, so they dry tomato leaves, shred them and scatter the leaves among the beans. Bugs (as they told us) run away. Sticks of a certain type of tree repel flying insects, so they stick small branches around the field to keep flying insects out. It is that type of education that will allow the local farmers to become self sustaining, producing everything they need in the area. The soil we saw was rich, good soil. It would be fun to come back in 5 
years to see the progress that is being made. When people support Mercy Ships, it is not only the blessing of healing we bring to the World's poor, we bring education to help the communities we serve overcome the root causes of the health problems they face, poor nutrition and sanitation for example. The other two picture are of the area, one of scenery and the other of a little ville we drove through. all in all it was a fun trip that made me feel even better that we came.
It's great to 'travel' with you... Eric & Lorraine Floreen
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