For me, one of the most interesting things to do in Benin is to drive along the beach on a  Saturday. Every few minutes you come upon tiny thatch homes lumped together into communities. There’s no running water or electricity, but the homes are literally on the beach, so I don’t think they have it so bad.

Especially interesting on Saturdays are the fishermen. At some point very early in the morning a giant net is cast, and then later in the day all the village men gather to pull it in. We encountered the men in the photo below last weekend. They had cast their net a several hour walk from their village, and in this photo they were pulling the net back home and hopefully, scooping up a good haul along the way.

You can’t see all the men in this photo, but there are several dozen on them. Every able bodied man in the village was there. Can you imagine every man in your community coming together to accomplish a shared goal? On a weekly basis, no less? I wish I could.