Being a woman almost always implies fighting for access to education, employment and having to endure discrimination by men who do not understand its importance for our lives and how to integrate their capacity, talent and strength into daily work. The objective must be that together we can row the boat of life in which men, women, children and young people travel towards a better destination for all.
Some rural women might find a way to overcome the challenges posed by the climate crisis, inequality and conflict by growing mushrooms like in the former Marxist state of Benin in Africa.
The planet is still our home and in it the genres do not end, but last and must be known well in order to make the journey of life happy and comfortable. Conditions that are not those that exist in Benin for women, who have had to suffer discrimination and separation from work activities for the mere fact of being women.
Many survive not only social conflict but also the climate crisis. And this is where the mushrooms come in because they can be grown year-round, in backyards, on vertically-stacked shelves, rather than waiting for naturally abundant ones in the rainy season. This is why Lyvia Fadeyi is a mycologist, studying fungi, and teaching the women of the Yaoui village how to best harness the economic value of this rare crop.
A new emerging industry
Mushrooms can be cultivated and later harvested to make foreign exchange enter the country by exporting the crop, whether for gastronomy, medicine or other purposes.
Benin is a West African State, which was called Dahomey until 1975. It has limits: to the North with Burkina Faso and Niger; to the East with Nigeria; to the South with the Gulf of Guinea, and to the West with Togo.
This human opportunity that is presented to Beninese women with the aim that they can objectively help their country and their existence in a country that does not accompany or motivate the gender towards its autonomy, independence and freedom. Conditions and states that allow us to create, design and share our ideas and reflections in peace without anyone blocking us or stopping the situation that allows us to exist in freedom in an organization or country like Benin that was under a dictatorship under the government of Mathieu Kérékou. It is an opportunity for the Africans of that Nation in an area hitherto unknown.
People who are part of a brave, enterprising and creative genre, from whom we can all learn codes that help us to face life independently, with courage and inventiveness, as I imagine is already happening in Benin with the mushrooms that now they are in the hands of women.
