Benin, a small country located just west Nigeria, has some of the most amazing women in the world. These women work harder than most of the people I've met in my life, and they work like this everyday. They begin their day before the sun rises and end it well after dark. They do all the domestic work in their houses, sweeping, laundry, cooking, but they also carry large loads of wood, water, and other items in their heads sometimes for miles. All the work they do is much more involved than the first world versions, laundry requires hand washing all clothes, cooking requires building a fire and tending your sauce over an open flame, going to buy food requires walking a great distance to the market everyday. Then these women pull water from a well and transport it to wash their dishes. Every few days a group of women go out into the brush with a machete and spend hours gathering firewood and carry back loads of wood that weigh more than they do. They do all this with a baby on their back.

When I first arrived in Benin as a development worker I was impressed by the lives of the women here. But the longer I stay here, the more appalled I am at the lack of support available to girls and women who chose not to live the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. Education is lacking with girls. High school is not free for children and often times parents who have to chose between educating only some of their children will invest in their boys education. Boys are more likely to use their education within a professional setting, whereas girls are more likely to get married. Another problem that faces girls within high school is that their professors sleep with them and hold the girls grades as ransom. The professors do this because they generally don't get caught, and when they do the punishment is a joke. This is a toxic environment for any girl.

From this lack of education girls and women don't generally hold knowledge in society. There is a mentality that women don't know how to do anything because they didn't go to school. I would like to think of myself as a strong woman, but I've become who I am because I've been given every break and opportunity in the world. These women haven't. This is why when I work with the community I pass the knowledge to the women.

Building mud stoves has been one thing I have chosen to give to my community. Women generally cook over an open flame. This is not only dangerous but an inefficient use of wood. The women are always in danger of a large pot full of boiling sauce toppling over and burning them. A mud stove take the three cooking stones and surrounds them with clay and continues on up the side of the pot. There is one opening for wood and the heat is centralized conserving precious firewood. The mud around the pot also makes it more stable for the woman cooking.

Mud stoves make cooking 70% more efficient. That means that not only wood stays in the forest but also women collect firewood on a less frequent basis. Also the stoves heat up faster and store it longer, making the time that it takes the cook a meal cut in half. This conservation of wood and time give women that much more time to do other productive activities, for example if you're a high school student you could study. Another important aspect of learning how to build mud stoves is that it gives women a practical way to make their lives better. Because the stoves don't cost any money to make they don't need to ask their husbands for funds. Also because the women are taught how to make them this is a knowledge that they hold, that they can give. It is always a great reward to watch as a woman teaches her sister how to make a mud stove. The woman has something to offer her community, giving her a self worth that might not have been there before. I've seen quite a few women who were timid in their knowledge, needing constant reassurance that what they were doing was correct, become givers of their knowledge with a confidence that wasn't there before.

Making mud stoves might not save the forest, or change the course of how women are treated in Benin, but it is at least helping make the cultural shift. Helping women value themselves is the first step in empowering them toward gender equality. Step by step women will be treated as equals in society here. My hope is that maybe these women who have been given confidence have daughters and help them develop their own self confidence, little by little, generation by generation, the lives of women only improving.