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This past December, one of the villages we visit every year was burned by members of the Ivorian Army, specifically pro-Ouattara forces. Broguhe was pro-Gbagbo during the last election, so this is probably a form of punishment. We (Project Hope and Fairness) are rebuilding the sewing room this week and electrifying it. In any case, Ivory Coast, which supplies 40% of the world's cocoa, is slowly rebuilding from a civil war that started in 1993 and flashes on and off.
Tom Neuhaus
Tom Drahos of Windows on the Water and I, Tom Neuhaus, president of Project Hope and Fairness, are doing a Molecular Gastronomy demo at the SLO Botanical Garden in San Luis Obispo, Dec. 16, to benefit Project Hope and Fairness, a non-profit established to help cocoa farmers. Last summer, we donated $4500 of tools to cocoa farmers in Ghana and Cameroon. To learn more about the demo, see www.projecthopeandfairness.org and click on the last item in the Events box. To read about last summer's trip, go to www.sweetearthchocolates.blogspot.com .
As President of Project Hope and Fairness, I spent 3 weeks in Ghana and Cameroon this summer and distributed tools to 8 villages using money raised by the NGO. To read about my adventures, please visit www.sweetearthchocolates.blogspot.com .
I spent 10 days in Cameroon, talking to people in government and industry about building a cocoa study center near the town of Ebalowa, the capital of South Cameroon. See the blog for details. Or contact me at: tom@projecthopeandfairness.org
Tom Neuhaus
Cloves drying. They are green, unopened flowers, that are spread out to dry for 3 days. The first day, they're green, the second day, tan, and the third day dark brown. 
Vanilla vine. It's in the orchid family. The woman who is growing the vine right alongside the road had just picked all the vanilla beans the day before. 
A cocoa grower standing next to her pickings. She had a small grove of trees. In Indonesia, they don't bother to ferment the beans. That and the fact that they are Forastero, produces a very mild-tasting chocolate. 
Closeup of drying beans. One has been split open and you can see that it's purple on the inside--a characteristic of the Forastero beans. 
Right next door was a small cocoa depot. There are no locks on any doors, as people are completely honest and would never steal each others' crops or products. 
Our driver shows how farmers get their beans to the depot.We drove on farther and our driver found this woman and her daughter to pick a pod for us... 
The girl tries to pull a pod out of the tree but proves unable to split one open. She ran across the street to get her mother... 
Her mother took a long stick outfitted with a knife at the end and cut a pod down. 
Her mother split the pod open with a knife to show the seeds. Typically, there are 30-40 seeds in a pod.
Although I had not phoned ahead, Thierry Detournay, the founder, was there. His official title is "Production Manager" and he co-owns the business with an Indonesian. At the time I arrived, there were probably 20 staff working in an old but clean house next to a charming courtyard. Thierry has learned to specialize; their major products are bars, made from chocolate manufactured in Indonesia, from Forastero beans grown in Indonesia. Indonesia is #3 in production worldwide, and of that, the vast majority of beans are grown on Sulawesi, a large island that looks like a "K". 
Thierry mostly sells his bars to hotels and other tourist venues, as chocolate bars are unaffordable to the average Indonesian who earns $2 per day. 
He has yet to mechanize, finding that it's far cheaper to use lots of labor than to purchase machinery that has to be shipped halfway around the world. Shelving and tables are all stainless steel, so he has invested in state-of-the art tools. 
Tubes of chocolate truffle filling. They stay molten because the room is 85 F. 
Thierry has worked out an astonishingly successful technique for tempering chocolate. The room they work in is kept about 85 degrees F, so when they fill the molds, there is no streaking caused by the formation of unstable beta crystals. Also, because there is no machinery, he has worked out a continuous system rather than batch system, keeping the chocolate freshly tempered and producing optimal shine. Chocolate is tempered in stainless steel pots. 
We visited a couple of packaging rooms. 
Thierry is either an accomplished artist or he knows someone who is, because his posters are superb, as are his chocolate bar wrappers.I found Thierry to be extremely helpful and friendly. We spent a little time speaking French (Thierry is Walloon or French Belgian), but his English was excellent and, not wanting to miss details, I suggested we speak English most of the time.