At the fringes of climate change's 'Ground Zero': zemijahns hit global potholed hi-way

(news report)
COTONOU, BENIN – "We are exposed to the heat of the sun over our heads, our eyes hurt in the smog and so we have to wear dark glasses,” says Sebastien Djossa, a moto-taxi conducteur plying the routes between Cadjehoun Highway and the Dantokpa Central Market here.

“At night, we are very tired, our bones ache. We have to pray everyday we will meet no accident," he adds.

Djossa, a Roman Catholic, like some 24 per cent of the population, speaks in conversant English, a skill that is rare in this former French colony.

Djossa also mentioned having experienced muscle pains, bouts of coughing and flu; for others, particularly who had been on the job for long years, even tuberculosis.

"Driving a moto-taxi cannot be my job forever. It can only be a transition job something I need to do while waiting for a better job," he says.

As jeepneys are to Manila so are "zemijahns" or "moto-taxis" to Cotonou.

Zemijahns or moto-taxis are two-wheeled Asian-made (mostly Chinese but some are Korean, Japanese and Indian) motorcycles which serve as the common people's conveyances in this tiny West African country just slightly bigger than Luzon island.

Coined into the local Fon language and into the Beninese variety of French, the "r" in the word "motor" is gone silent. "Zemi" in the Fon language means "get there fast".

Like its unemployment rate, there is no readily available figure of the total number of motorcycles nor of its drivers plying the Cotonou routes but Beninese estimates say it could run in thousands.

A back-riding commuter by moto-taxi pays between 100 to 250 Communaute Financiere Africaine or, for short, CFA (pronounced "sey-fah") francs (about PhP10 to PhP25) for every route.

A West African regional currency drawn from the Central Bank of West African States and also used by Togo, Burkina Faso and Mali, one CFA franc is equivalent to about ten Philippine centavos.

‘Ground Zero’
Jan Engeland, UN Secretary-General's special adviser on conflict, while on a visit in this area last month, called this part of Western Africa, as climate change's ‘Ground Zero’, where the worst impact of climate change will be felt by the world's poorest peoples, especially women and children.

Moreover, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)that evaluates the risk of climate change caused by human activity, also said in its 4th report last year that the West African Sahel and Central Africa will experience some of the highest temperature increases anywhere in the world over the next few decades.

The carbon dioxide emissions from moto-taxis in Cotonou account for 95 percent of air pollution in this major Beninese port city, according to a joint report on climate change impacts on Benin published recently by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and GTZ, the German Development Foundation.

But even as the Beninese in Cotonou would suffer these toxic fumes daily, they have negligible carbon footprints. The Human Development Report (UNDP-HDR) 2007/2008 says that "with 0.1 per cent of the world's population, Benin (pop. 8 million) accounts for 0.0% of global emissions - an average of 0.3 ton of CO2 per person."

The UNDP-HDR further says that "these emission levels are below those of Sub-Saharan Africa. In contrast, the Philippines (pop. 90 million), with 1.30 per cent of the world's population,accounts for 0.3 per cent of the global emissions -- an average of 1 ton of CO2 per person."

Princes of the roads
The zemijahns' chief rider here is called the conducteur, French word for 'driver', a linguistic legacy of cultural ties with France, which colonized most of the territory in the 1800s till 1959.

But like the Filipino jeepney drivers, most moto-taxi conducteurs feel like they are princes of the roads, and most often throw caution to the wind.

Yet despite their audacity in driving at speeds of 50 to 75 kph through the hot, dusty and thick city traffic, they barely eke out a living and are always exposed to dangers and health problems.

A drop-out from a mechanical engineering course on his junior year, Djossa, 32, was forced to drive a moto-taxi by the lack of jobs even for college students or graduates.

"Many of us are professionals. I know someone who is an accountant who drives a moto-taxi and one who studies to become a computer analyst. But there are few jobs in Benin now," Djossa explains. "This is not shameful criminal work. This is better than starving."

No helmets
No zemijanh conducteur nor its paying commuter ever wears a helmet, not only because their costs are prohibitive, about 15,000 CFA francs (about PhP1,500), a price that could mean a week's earnings but also because government does not encourage them to wear protective helmets despite the high number of road accidents involving motorcycles.

Conducteurs however wear a bright yellow cotton jacket with a serial number over a right front pocket to distinguish them from private citizens riding their own vehicles.

"We pay rent to the moto owner at 2,000 francs CFA (about P200 in Philippine peso) and earn about 400 to 500 for ourselves. Sometimes we don't earn enough in a day and can't pay the rent," Djossa added.

According to him, it helps that the local government had suspended its taxes for zemijahns and their conducteurs this year. The city also provides free medical services to conducteurs and their families, a move that is still part of its welfare-conscious socialist past.

"We used to pay a monthly tax of 6,000 CFA francs (around PhP600) but that is erased now," Djossa said. The federation of moto-taxis won the tax-free concession after having supported politicians who won in the local elections last year.

'Contraband as high art'
It further helps that gasoline and crude oil are peddled on the roadsides. Two decades since the New York Times wrote about "the high art of contraband" in once-Marxist Benin, then tail-spinning into deep crisis, and yet still the smuggling oil thrives here and, ironically, even more blatantly in free market, democratic Benin.

Just when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines in 1972, a paratrooper named Mathieu Kerekou declared a Marxist-Leninist communist state after a successful coup, the fifth after the country gained independence from France in 1960.

In 1990, about four years after the Philippine EDSA Revolt, after 17 years of state-managed economy and due to economic woes and people's unrest, Benin's national leadership abandoned communism in favor of capitalism's free market and democracy. Two years ago, it elected as president Thomas Yayi Boni, an economist and former president of the Western African Development Bank.

Gasoline by the bottles
Stalls of glass jars and bottles all filled to the brim with gasoline, crude oil or diesel fuel is the most ubiquitous sight along Cotonou's roads all the way to the capital city of Porto-Novo in the East and Grand Popo to the West as well as deep into central Zou department (province) up North.

Stall owners have been very wary of 'yovos' (meaning, 'whites' but the word is now used to mean strangers of any color other than ebony) and were difficult to interview but a source said that most get supplies from a network of suppliers.


The oil, smuggled in from nearby Nigeria and acknowledged of poor quality, serves the hundreds, if not thousands, of motorcycles daily fuel needs. For several urban poor families, keeping a stall of purloined gasoline is the only lifeline to survival.

About 30,000 Beninese are former workers in Nigeria’s oil fields before Nigeria tightened its borders in the 90s and some of them must have maintained Nigerian links. Legal gasoline dealers like Sonacop and Oryx could only cry foul but are helpless over these diminutive competitors

"Selling on the streets is against the law but no one is arrested. No one imposes the law enforces because the government understands us," ventures to explain Antoine Makpenon, another zemijahn conducteur.

"There is also no big jail enough for all," he adds, his a wide toothy grin in his dusty face. Only 24, Antoine has been driving since he was 21, using a rented Yamaha 50, the kind that used to be trendy in the Philippines way back in the late 60s.

Shock of high food prices
Juliette Koudenoukpo Biaou, the country's environmental minister, says that the government is aware of the illicit trade of gasoline on the streets and highways of Cotonou and of the dangers these pose on public health and safety.

But Koudenoukpo Biaou stressed that the local government is in charge with law enforcement. Most probably the authorities hands are tied as the political support of conducteurs' unions during the elections was vital to the success of politicians in the last elections.

"We prefer to buy from the small stalls because we can buy but pay later . Besides the regular stations like Oryx and Sonacop, a liter of petrol costs 600 francs CFA while the stalls sell them at only 300 francs CFA, even less," says Makpenon.

One thing that Djossa, Makpenon and other conducteurs all complain about is the high cost of food. The usual roadside meal of rice and fish in spicy sauce or cornmeal balls and fried fish with garlic dip was only 500 CFA francs a month ago. Now, simple meals can cost 1,500 CFA francs.

Benin, a Western African country slightly bigger than the size of Luzon at 110,000 square kilometers as compared to Luzon's more than 109,000 square kilometers, is considered among the most vulnerable nations to the impact of climate change. Already ranked 163rd among 177 countries in the UNDP’s Human Development Index 2007-2008, it is also considered among the world's 40 poorest and least developed countries.

In its fourth assessment report issued last year, the IPCC has projected that the urban poor in the Gulf of Guinea region, like these moto-taxi conducteurs, will most likely feel the effects of climate change not as only through freak weather conditions but also through spiralling food prices.

Loans and subsidies
In Cotonou, the country's largest city and financial center, the populace complain of rapid rise of food prices in the past few weeks.

This even as the government has provided subsidies, particularly for imported rice from Thailand that is retailed at 1,375 CFA francs (PhP13.75) per kilo.

But Hamsah Fatay, 52, a roadside motorcycle vendor, says business is brisk despite the economic downturn. He gets his supply of motorcycles from a Chinese wholesaler based in Nigeria and he sells them at 300,000 to 600,000 CFA francs, mostly by installments, payable within a year.

In June this year, President Yayi Boni has drawn a loan from the International Monetary Fund's special discounted facility for countries with low incomes. Like Haiti and Mali, Benin is using the funds to provide subsidies to agriculture and to hedge off the prices of prime commodities.

But the middle-class, who are beginning to feel the pinch in the past few weeks. are still worried about long-term impacts of the food crisis. “The government can only help enough. It cannot continue to borrow money and subsidize forever. But the poor might not be able to understand the limits of government’s capacity to help the poor sector,” says moto-taxi commuter Florence Worju, an accountant at the Nigerian International School.

Djossa was surprised to learn about the loan and said, "That's good. I hope the money goes into adult education, too," adding that, "It could mean I can fulfill my dream of going back to school and learn better English soon and get a certificate."

Then this prince of the road said something extremely familiar way back in the Philippines: "Then, I will get a visa out of here and find a better job somewhere in the world where English is spoken. There is no future for me here."

Mariona Vivar of the Paris-based Alternative Channel wrote a similar article in Spanish in her AC blog.

(Thanks to MEDIA 21, UNDP, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Mindanao Gold Star Daily and the Global Pinoy Magazine)