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.
Most days, you are the only worker out there. Well, you and your kids.
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.
Credits:
Sherri Coyote