Day 32 - Sampaka Cocoa Plantation

We did a lot of cool things today!  When I woke up there were people screaming and cheering outside and I wasn’t sure why.  Then David told us that the president was probably giving away toys or something at the palace.  David got us churros for breakfast…healthy, I know…and then we were off to Sampaka to see the cocoa plantation that Luisa works at, one of David’s friends whom I’ve mentioned on here before.

Yummy churro!

The tour Luisa gave us was very insightful.  At first I thought it was going to be in Spanish, but then I found out that although she was born and raised in Spain, both of her parents are British, so she speaks English as well….with a British accent though…it is so funny because you wouldn’t expect it.  Anyways, she started by taking us to one of the squares of the plantation…the plantation is divided into one-acre squares and each of the farmers gets their own squares that they have to maintain all year round.  The plantation provides housing for the farmers and their family since they have to work all year round.  The farmers get paid for each box of cocoa grains they collect.  Each box is 10 kilos and Luisa said that the best farmers manage to harvest three plots of land, three squares, meaning they maximize all that they can do in one year.  This also means that they recruit all of their family to help them on those squares.  Each plot of land can produce about 100-110 boxes of cocoa and each box is worth about 8.500 cfa of pay.  For a years work, it isn’t the greatest, but it isn’t bad. 

August to October is the harvesting time for the cocoa here and the cocoa trees are all of the trees that are lower to the ground.  They also have about 20 trees in each plot to provide shade and a little canopy over the cocoa trees.  One the flowers bloom on the branches of the tree, a big orange fruit is what the farmers cut down with machetes…this fruit is what houses the cocoa.  Each fruit contains about 20 or so grains of cocoa and each of those individual grains is covered in a white pulp.  David and Luisa both said that if you suck on the pulp it is very sweet, but if you chew it, it’s bitter and unpleasant. 

Once all of the fruits are cut down, they are cracked open and each grain is removed from the pulp.  Then the farmers fill as many boxes as they can.  Once all of the boxes are collected from each farmer, all of the cocoa grains are placed into these big crates that have two holes in the back.  They are let in the crate to ferment and the longer they are let to ferment, the stronger flavor they contain. 

After the fermentation process, they get emptied onto the big driers behind the crates.  The driers are made of ceramic tiles and there is a wood-burning oven that supplies heat from underneath the driers.  The cocoa gets piled into about a 2 inch think layer onto the driers, so there is a pulley system…also controlled by an oven system…has sifters that are constantly moving the grains around.  This process of drying was adopted in the 1960s because the cocoa can’t be let to dry naturally like in other places of the world because for Bioko, the rainy season right after the grains are harvested.

After they are dried…which takes about three days and only takes out about 95% of moisture… then the grains are taken to another room where they are let cool and then cleaned.  In the cleaning room, there is this big pulley like machine that separates the dirt and the grains.  Once they are all cleaned, the grains go out of this shoot on the other side of the wall from the cleaner and placed in sacs.  Then the sacs are put in this room that has extra insulation to keep out moisture and eventually shipped off to Spain or wherever they are destined to be!! 

In order to get to the raw chocolate then, the shell has to be cracked off of the cocoa bean itself.  There happened to be some stragglers in the cleaning machine, so Luisa cracked it open for us to try…I’ve never had raw chocolate before! It tasted very strong, almost like Kahlua alcohol, too. It was interesting. 

It was really cool learning exactly how it is all done, but it saddened me when Luisa was explaining the history and what is happening to the plantation.  When the Spaniards originally colonized the island, that specific plant had been about 1,800 acres and stretched all the way to the sea.  Now, they have maybe 800 acres and the government keeps expropriating land from them.  Actually they just recently sent a letter to the plantation saying they were going to expropriate another 40 acres of land a few days ago and then the following day, bulldozers showed up and had already taken some down.  It is so sad knowing the government is relying so much on the oil production because it is a known fact that Bioko is going to run out of oil in the 2020s, so they can’t solely rely on it.  It also is a shame because cocoa trees are in their prime when they are around 10 years old until they are about 40 years old…aka exactly how old the trees are now!!  But yet they are being cut down and not being replenished anywhere else.  Almost all of the other cocoa plantations that were once on the island are shut down by now.  I mean, I guess it is a problem that the EG government will have to face when it becomes that time….

I must say that it was awesome getting a walk through of how raw cocoa is obtained and what all it takes to get to the beans themselves…especially since I have already seen the process of the beans being made into the chocolate bars we all enjoy at Hershey’s Chocolate World!  I’ve seen the whole process now!

Luisa and David walking toward one of the plots of cocoa trees

View coming into the plantation

Some of the residential areas for farmers.

If you can see the little orange bud in the middle of the branch, that is the beginning of the orange cocoa fruit. Unfortunately, it is not harvesting season.

The shorter trees are the cocoa bearing ones.

One of the roads that has taken away land for growing cocoa. Again, the shorter trees are the cocoa trees.

The newest expropriated land by the government. In two days they managed to already demolish an entire plot.

The inside of the plantation.

Main house on plantation where Luisa and other workers live.

Boxes where the grains are measured out into 10 kilos for each box. 

One of the crates where the grains ferment.

List of what is acceptable for the grains and what isn't.

Driers. You can see some cocoa remnants on this one.

Oven for the driers. 

Wood used for the ovens.

Cleaning machine.

Cocoa grain with shell.

Mural of all the  goods produced on Bioko.  The orange fruits are the cocoa.

Shoot that the clean grains come out of.

After that, we headed to class and right by the student house there is this hotel being built and there is a lot of trash outside…various pieces of foam and cardboard.  It was funny because there were these little kids throwing it around and jumping in it.  The first thing I thought of when I saw it was that it was EG’s form of playing in piles of fallen leaves. 

Once we got to class we waited for an hour and our professor never showed up…we then found out that he was still in London!  So Prospero, Pastor and Antonio took us around to the Semu market, which I hadn’t been to yet.  They were showing us all of these stands and giving us bargaining techniquesin Spanish for if we ever go there without them.  Reed bought a few shirts and I bought a scarf for 100 cfa…about 20 American cents!! Not too bad.  Then I got this one guy to make me a mixed CD with some of the popular music here.  I can’t wait to share some songs with people from home…they are good! I mean, aside from all of the Drake, Nicki Minaj and Akon that people from home already know about.

One aspect I did not like seeing was the bushmeat market, which is in Semu market.  It was really sad seeing all of the poor animals being cooked there…there were two Blue Duikers and one Erythrotis, among other little mammals. 

I liked everything else about our day, though! And tomorrow we have two more destinations – I can’t wait!

Oh and Reed made some delicious Sangria...minus the fruit because we had none! Still good to have with dinner!

Hasta luego,

Lindsey