I was donating a USB cellular modem to the Peace Corp for use in a Cocoa Plantation in the hills over Almirante. I had been asked to drop it off in Bocas, but I decided to take the kids to the plantation. A boat ride to Bocas, a water taxi to Almirante. We went grocery shopping as groceries are much cheaper in Almirante but ended up buying nothing more than a box of Oreos and a quart of milk. A twenty minute taxi ride later we were at Rio Oeste Arriba a cocoa plantation of over 100,000 trees owned by sixty families. We were met by Sam who directed us to Adam Armstrong, a Peace Corp volunteer who has organized tours of the facilities, with all proceeds going to the natives.
We walked by a preparation area, a woman was hand grating bars of prepped cocoa into powder. They have no electricity, they don't even have rain catchment systems, they drink water out of the river. Women in one area were measuring out tiny hundreds of tiny bags of sugar while across the room women were pouring in these hundreds of bags of sugar into the ground cocoa mixture to which condensed milk had been added. "Hey, Adam, why don't they just measure this by the cupful?" "I've been telling them that since I got here, this is they way they learned it eighty years ago. Strange. Very strange.
We tried out the cellular modem on a relic of a computer without success. This is in a slight valley over a big hill. Do they even get a signal? Adam didn't seem concerned, they'd find a spot where they could get a signal. Mark pulled out his Oreos and milk. Adam, who probably gets a huge percentage of his calories from chocolate eagerly accepted some Oreos. Mark cut the top off of the milk and we dunked directly into the carton as there were no glasses available.
We trekked up muddy slopes into the jungle, all sort of hardwoods shaded the cocoa trees, some plants fixed nitrogen, all husks were composted and returned. No fertilizer, no pesticides. Many trees had some sort of disease that resulted in a huge percentage loss of pods. Trees with split trunks one trunk diseased and one trunk fruitful. "Why don't they fell the diseased trunks?" "They should, they don't."
The pods were of every color, red, green, purple, yellow. These were not phases of development and different colored pods appeared on the same tree. Adam reported that the different colors have slightly different flavors, but that they don't separate them. He pulled a pod from a tree, banged on the trunk and listened, pulled it open and offered us some. Inside the pods are seeds covered in a white viscous material. If you pull out a seed and suck the material it is sweet and pleasant. Danielle reluctantly tried one and made a strange face. Seems she was just surprised by the taste. The seed is spat out.
Back down through the muck to the kitchen the chocolate was done. Hmmm. Delicious. We called our cab, walked down to the road with Adam. An Indian joined us, he pointed out a sable tree and said that was the tree they used to make cayucos, dugout canoes. I told Adam that I wanted a couple, he talked to the man and we walked by a cayuco. The man said it was big enough for two. I replied that it didn't look big enough for me. He pointed to another tree and said I needed one that size, about twice the size of this one. Well, we shall see, I've ordered one before and nothing materialized.
http://www.thebocasbreeze.com/current-issue/december-diciembre-2011-v.shtml
http://panamajournal.blogspot.com/p/grant.html
We walked by a preparation area, a woman was hand grating bars of prepped cocoa into powder. They have no electricity, they don't even have rain catchment systems, they drink water out of the river. Women in one area were measuring out tiny hundreds of tiny bags of sugar while across the room women were pouring in these hundreds of bags of sugar into the ground cocoa mixture to which condensed milk had been added. "Hey, Adam, why don't they just measure this by the cupful?" "I've been telling them that since I got here, this is they way they learned it eighty years ago. Strange. Very strange.
We tried out the cellular modem on a relic of a computer without success. This is in a slight valley over a big hill. Do they even get a signal? Adam didn't seem concerned, they'd find a spot where they could get a signal. Mark pulled out his Oreos and milk. Adam, who probably gets a huge percentage of his calories from chocolate eagerly accepted some Oreos. Mark cut the top off of the milk and we dunked directly into the carton as there were no glasses available.
We trekked up muddy slopes into the jungle, all sort of hardwoods shaded the cocoa trees, some plants fixed nitrogen, all husks were composted and returned. No fertilizer, no pesticides. Many trees had some sort of disease that resulted in a huge percentage loss of pods. Trees with split trunks one trunk diseased and one trunk fruitful. "Why don't they fell the diseased trunks?" "They should, they don't."
The pods were of every color, red, green, purple, yellow. These were not phases of development and different colored pods appeared on the same tree. Adam reported that the different colors have slightly different flavors, but that they don't separate them. He pulled a pod from a tree, banged on the trunk and listened, pulled it open and offered us some. Inside the pods are seeds covered in a white viscous material. If you pull out a seed and suck the material it is sweet and pleasant. Danielle reluctantly tried one and made a strange face. Seems she was just surprised by the taste. The seed is spat out.
Back down through the muck to the kitchen the chocolate was done. Hmmm. Delicious. We called our cab, walked down to the road with Adam. An Indian joined us, he pointed out a sable tree and said that was the tree they used to make cayucos, dugout canoes. I told Adam that I wanted a couple, he talked to the man and we walked by a cayuco. The man said it was big enough for two. I replied that it didn't look big enough for me. He pointed to another tree and said I needed one that size, about twice the size of this one. Well, we shall see, I've ordered one before and nothing materialized.
http://www.thebocasbreeze.com/current-issue/december-diciembre-2011-v.shtml
http://panamajournal.blogspot.com/p/grant.html
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