Date of publication: December 8, 2007
Source: The Independent (UK)
Author: Rose Skelton
Excerpt from article:
With dusk falling under a perfectly full moon, the village of Bayerebon 3, in the remote western region of Ghana, is nowhere near sleeping. Smoke rises from cooking fires, logs crackle and spit from the clay fireplaces tucked in the side of every mud-brick house, and there is the bustle of activity as corn is fetched from the storehouses, cassava and yam is pounded in furious strokes and people, everywhere, chatter. The unmistakable smell of fermenting cocoa beans, an ever-present hot alcoholic steam, rises off the rows and rows of brown seeds that are turned, and turned again, until they have reached perfection. Before night falls, in this village without running water or electricity, the jobs of the day must be completed.
Elias Mohammed, a slender man with sun-darkened skin glowing under a tattered skullcap, sits at a desk on the porch of his cracked concrete home. Beside him are the weighing scales of his trade, and behind him, stacks of hessian sacks containing the crop that is the blood and soul of this small farming community. A cocoa farmer from one of the smallholdings near the village has just delivered, by hand, his crop of cocoa beans for Elias to weigh, check for quality and size, and then pay for...