I traveled through Benin and Togo, West Africa to learn about the enduring legacies of the transatlantic slave trade, the spiritual traditions of Vodoo, and the complicated history of colonization. I stood at the Door of No Return in Ouidah, walked the roads where enslaved people once took their final steps toward the sea, and witnessed voodoo rituals often misunderstood. Yet the story that stayed with me was not only about history—it was about the people who continue to carry its weight. Watching a woman mine salt by hand beneath the relentless West African sun, I saw labor transformed into love, survival, and quiet resilience. “Salt and “Bone” grew from that encounter, a reminder that while history leaves scars, dignity endures in the ordinary work of living.
~Sherri Harvey
Salt and Bone
An eight-week-old baby plays in the grit while her older sister watches on, their childhood measured out in the shadow of boiling cauldrons and sand piles. This is the only daycare available when your livelihood relies on breaking the earth by hand.
Salt is a sacred spirit, a tradable resource, a life necessity, and a hard-won commodity. It seasons bland food, melts ice, soothes wounds, and preserves what would otherwise decay. An infinite presence in the world. But imagine, for a moment, that your livelihood depends on mining it by hand.
Salt mining is laborious, a relentless process of extracting the mineral from underground or surface deposits, separating it from the earth. Modern machinery has made salt cultivation easier over the past two centuries, yet in some remote corners of the world, human hands still bear the weight of this ancient craft. If your job is to unearth this precious mineral, you are both the operation and the labor force. Most days, you are the only worker in sight.
You live in Ouidah, a coastal city in southern Benin, a place once infamous for its role in the transatlantic slave trade. By 1865, the palm oil industry had replaced human suffering as the city’s primary export, yet labor remains grueling.
At sunrise, the marshland stretches before you, an expanse of sand and shallow pools, punctuated by wicker huts and drying grass. The sky glows an endless blue, and the land shimmers green with scattered tufts of vegetation. Cauldrons of water boil in the distance, sand piles dot the horizon. Your pickaxe is an extension of your body—digging, churning, breaking apart the earth. The African sun blazes overhead, a merciless force that scorches your back, neck, and bare shoulders. The ocean, a salty mirage, lies within sight but offers no reprieve. The wind carries no breeze, only heat.
The air is thick with grit, and sand clings to every part of you, even beneath your skirt. You feel both alive and drained, as if salt has seeped into your very bones. You stay because this is the work you know. You stay because there are no other choices. You stay because here, your children can be with you.
You have just given birth to your third child, and with no childcare, your children grow up beside you, playing in the sand as you toil. Your eldest, barely old enough to understand responsibility, watches over her two-year-old sister and eight-week-old baby sibling. You tell her she’s in charge. When she cries and you lift her into your arms, the salt in her tears graces your lips—a reminder that even grief is seasoned by labor.
All day, it is just you, the salt, and the children. Your body is heavy with post-baby weight, aching from hours of bending, lifting, and striking the earth. You have heard stories of people tossing salt over their shoulders for luck, rimming their margarita glasses with it as a luxury. The thought is unfathomable. Every grain of salt you extract is survival—it is what keeps your family fed.
Six hundred CFA per kilo. One U.S. dollar.*
In another life, you could have been a fashion model.
*Editor’s note: In the table below, the left column indicates the number of CFA (African currency) is required to purchase the noted item and the right column indicates the number of US dollars required to purchase the same item.
| A meal at an inexpensive restaurant | 2000 | 3.32 |
| Domestic Beer | 600 | 1 |
| Bottled Water or Loaf of Bread | 300 | .50 |
| 1 kilo salt (2.2 lbs) | 600 | 1 |
| Private preschool, full day | 125,000 | 207 |
| Monthly apt rent outside the city | 76,000 | 126 |
| Average Monthly Salary | 171,000 | 284 |
From Numbeo.com
Find out more about Sherri Harvey and her work here.
Read more about women in West Africa making ancient salt production methods more sustainable.
Read more about The Door of No Return in Quidah.
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