Salt making - continued

On 7th November 2009 I made the following blog entry whilst we were in Benin, West Africa.

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Making salt

Across the lagoon from Babs Dock is a very weird landscape:

Dominique told me it is where locals make salt during the dry season. The sand is rich in salt - it is placed in the baskets, and fresh water is poured through to wash the salt out into the collecting bowl below. The salt-rich water is then boiled away over cooking fires, and the salt is collected.

However, like most ingenious things in West Africa there are drawbacks. The cooking fires use up huge amounts of wood, resulting in local deforestation. And the "home-made" salt is iodine-free, so many local people suffer from conditions due to a lack of iodine in their diets, such as Thyroid conditions and goiters. Olly
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Today, 19th January 2013, the BBC News website Africa in pictures had the following entry:

Africa in pictures: 11-17 January 2013 

Women salt diggers collect top soil in the village of Djegbadji near Ouidah in Benin. Afterwards 
they will filter water through the soil to draw out salt and later boil the water to collect the salt 
to sell.

BBC, are you copying my blog (in exchange for all the things I copy from your websites I guess?) Olly