Visit to a cacao plantation

Thursday July 14th – a trip to a plantation. Since Herbert is in the coffee- and cacao business, it is
very interesting to talk to the workers at the cacao plantation, see the process and take some pictures.

Through a very muddy bush road we arrived in the center of the plantation where the 10 workers and their families live.

By the look of their clothes we could tell that those people were very poor, the people in the village surrounding the orphanage look rich compared to those people here at the plantation.

Even if they don’t always smile on pictures, I know they were very happy for the clothes we brought for all families.

Not all of the children and women were there at the moment, but we left clothes for everybody. All the children were boys, so we could leave the girls clothes in the car.

From a sponsor in the Netherlands, we got many red T-shirts which we could give to all workers and their wives.

Then it was time for me to play journalist :-) I talked to a nice man who was known to be the cacao expert on the plantation.

My brother Solo translated, but the man spoke some English so the interview went very well.

He told me a lot about the process from planting the tree to selling the dried beans.

They also showed us around the plantation.

Besides the cacao they have lime, orange, banana and tangerines.

When leaving, we were given a big box of all kinds of fruits.

On our way back, we stopped along the road to hand out some more clothes, since we had some girls clothes and baby clothes left. It is so nice to see how happy those people are with the attention and some new clothes.

What made my day, apart from the very interesting visit to the plantation, was stopping the car at a very small
village (if you even can call it that – there were no more than 5 or 6 houses) and giving all the children a toy and holding the very cute twin girls! :-)