The life of 12-year-old Ahomansou Bernadette has always been a matter of balance. A fragile balance. Every afternoon, he puts a bowl on his head and jumps nimbly through the dirt aisles of the Cotonou fish market in southern Benin to sell cakes, bags of water and smoked fish. His family situation is the definition of imbalance: after living with his father, he moved to his mother’s house to later spend a few months with his grandmother and finally to live with his uncle. The result of so much going back and forth through poor homes was school dropout. At the age of ten, Bernadette left school and became part of the 200 children who work every day in the Beninese market as fishermen’s assistants, warehouse workers or street vendors. But that goodbye to education that seemed final changed to a lucky stroke of strange acronyms: PCA. For two years, Bernadette has been part of the thirty students of the Accelerated Course Program (PCA), an educational project managed by the Catalan NGO Educo with other local entities, which has brought the school to the heart of the port .
The center, built in 2020 in the middle of the market, offers concentrated courses to port worker children so that, in just three years, they can complete primary school, instead of the six required for formal education. In addition to helping to recover the years of education lost, the center adapts the timetables so that minors can work if they need to. For Lokonome Prosper, coordinator of the Educo centre, flexibility is key. “We are aware that the only possibility for the children of the market to go to school is to bring the center here. In addition, they go to class in the morning so they can go to work in the afternoon. We have to adapt to their reality because if it isn’t, none would come.”
Although every afternoon she has to sell cakes and load her basin, for Bernadette things have changed since the opening of the port classrooms. “I really like coming to school, they don’t beat you here! They give you a uniform, notebooks and we sing or have parties. Sometimes they even give us some rice or other things. It’s the best place in the world, without a doubt,” he says. If she could, she’d send the afternoon teapot to hell. “Child labor is not good. If it were up to me, I would never work again until I was older”, he exclaims.
His classmate Konate Bangaly Ali, also 12 years old, has to combine school with the sale of plastic bags in the Misebo market, which bring in about two euros a day, vital to the family economy. After two years without sitting at a desk, Ali returned to the classroom thanks to the school in the port and now enthusiastically describes a marathon day: “I get up at five in the morning to help my mother boil roots for sell them as a remedy at the market, I walk two hours to get to school at eight o’clock and, when I leave, at around one o’clock, I sell bags until seven or eight o’clock in the afternoon”.
Despite the tiredness, Ali says he is happy. “In my house we need the money, but now I can also study and I will be able to achieve my dream of becoming a great truck driver, like my father. At night I’m tired, but I prefer that to just working and working non-stop”, he explains.
Although the center of the fishing port aspires to be able to welcome more minors soon, the stream of boys and girls walking among boxes full of fish, boats on the sand and tangled fishing nets warns that the problem is not yet solved . Not even close.
Lokossus Deogracias, 14 years old, gets some coins in exchange for his back pain: he pushes the handle of a fountain and charges seven cents to fill each bucket with water. He plays all the roles of the auca. He also helps unload the fish boxes or sells pieces of ice. His shirt full of holes is the presentation letter of a life without a break. She would much rather go to school, but her uncle, with whom she lives, does not want her to go because he needs the money. “My dream? Go to school to learn to write or read well. I would like to be a policeman or a doctor, have a normal job and earn money to live peacefully”.
His words coincide with the departure of the students, who shout happily. Deogracias looks at the boys and girls shyly and notices their uniforms. He wishes out loud again and sighs. “Having clothes like that… Ah! I would really like that.”
