Just outside of the concession where we live there is an intersection with several small businesses including: a woman selling oranges; a woman selling tomatoes, garlic and ginger; and a woman who runs a grinding machine. Its basically a blender run by a lawnmower engine; the engines for the machines are literally pulled from old lawnmowers and other discarded machines. The grinder/blender part is made locally. For 50 cfa ($0.10), you can run whatever ingredients you want through the machine and they will be ground to a pulp. Families bring bowls of tomatoes with onions, garlic, ginger and hot chiles which are ground before being cooked into the ubiquitous Beninese tomato sauce.
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