Working in the Chocolate Farm

I'm pretty sure that Solomon put some crack in my coffee last night because I could not sleep. Maybe I was just excited to actually do something constructive the next day and couldn't stop thinking about it, but whatever it was I was not sleeping a wink. I've been growing quite tired of sitting around. Literally. The thing about being in the jungle is that there is an endless amount of time here. Once work or school is done which takes about 4 hours tops out of the day, people kind of sit around and listen to the radio or bang clothes on rocks to wash them. I opted for an adventure in the farm today to fight my boredom. The first part of my day was pretty constructive and started with me waking up at 6:30 am.

I opened my eyes to the rising sun and realized that I had eventually fallen asleep at some point during the night. The mat I had borrowed from my future community counterpart was better than just the boards which I had sleeping on the previous two nights, but something else had kept me up. This is a strange place and sleep is sometimes hard to come by when your mind is constantly trying to familiarize itself with new environments. Laying on my side staring at my phone wondering what time it is I realized that I had not spoken English in 4 days and wasn't going to today. I checked the time. 6:20 am. Shit, well my alarm is going to go off anyways so I drag myself out of bed by rolling under my mosquito net and try to find some clothes that I don't care about. They are for sure going to be ruined before the day is done.

No one is up in the house and I didn't really expect there to be a strong presence this early in the morning on a Sunday. I cram my feet into my size 10 work rain boots and start the trip down the hill. I have never had a pair of boots like these and really had no reason to own a pair before. They are necessary here. More than tuff heals with plenty of traction, super high sidewalls to keep out the bugs and snakes, and easy to clean and keep. Everyone here has them and I can see why. The mud is unforgiving and one wrong step and you could be a foot deep in mud. If your wearing sandles you can forget about it. You'll never see them again.

I arrived at Solomon's house right on time found him lounging without a shit in a hammock under his house. He seems surprised I'm there and I explain that I didn't get much sleep and had no breakfast so as not to expect much from me. He laughs and hands me a bowl of food. I take the fish from the bowl and hand it back to him. “No me gusta pescado, lo siento” I say. He looks at me like I'm crazy and I can see my meat options here dwindling. I eat the two hand ground and fried tortillas and down my coffee. Solomon eats his bowl of food plus my fish and we are ready.

Climbing the steep grade behind Solomon's house I realize that there are kids following us. “What are these kids doing here” I say winded and almost passing out from the climb. “Work” Solomon says back again with grin on his face. I find out the kids are his nephews and are ages 7, 8, and 9 and its pretty much a given that if you don't have homework and your able to walk here that your working. I said nothing but couldn't help but think that my ex step dad must have grow up here. We make it to the top and Solomon uses his machete to hack off the branches on a long stick. After jimmy rigging an axe end to the end of the pole we are ready to start working.

There are only two rules for harvesting cocoa. One, cut off the fruit that has yellow in it. Two, cut off the fruit that is dead because it is infected and will infect the others.

We are working. Hard. And I'm sweating through my clothes. The air is so thick I can taste it and jungle is everywhere. This cocoa is the definition of shade grown organic. It is literally growing in the rain the rainforest. The slope is steep and standing up is hard even without trying to hack off the melon sized fruit. I've got the long stick with the axe end and Solomon is getting dirty with the machete hacking off fruit without even looking, picking them up off the ground using the machete and cutting into them just a little to make sure its not rotten. He has been doing this his whole life and can't remember a time when he didn't have a machete in his hand. He has the scars to prove it.

The kids have large sacks made from a plant here by the artisan group and they are carefully following behind us picking up the grounded fruit. The sacks are large and must way upwards of 50lbs. The common way of carrying them is putting the strap over the forehead and laying the sack across the back leaving both hands free and this makes my neck hurt. I'm slashing and getting fruit way up in the trees and just going full steam. At this point everything is wet and everything is dirty. The shards of plant and dirt smeared on my face and is starting to make my eyes swell but I keep going. Can't make Solomon think I'm not cut out for this. I need to prove myself as a good worker to gain the respect of the locals.

I've started to take chances to get fruit that could have been considered impossible or at least hard to get before. I stand on the stump of an old growth tree and reach my pole for a fruit so high up I can barely touch it. I can see Solomon's eyes get larger and he tells me to be careful. I'm reaching and reaching and look at Solomon and he is just staring. Success. I cut down the highest fruit I can see and look to Solomon for his reaction. Nothing. Blank stares and not even at me. Solomon is looking directly past me and in a moment I freeze. “What” I say not wanting or able to turn around on the narrow stump. “Its an animal. An animal I've never heard before” Solomon says with a straight face. I jump off the stump and turn to look. Nothing but thick jungle. “Want to go see what it is” Solomon says curiously. “Hell ya” I say in Spanish and not directly translated. If this guy who has grown up in this jungle and in this area wants to look for an animal that he has never heard it must be good.

Solomon is leading the way with me behind him, the dog behind me, and the kids behind the dog. I've got my fruit tool which I'm now holding like a weapon and I'm so excited that I don't realize that we are now cutting through real thick jungle that is crawling with things that want to hurt me. We tunnel through some heavy vines and bushes and come out under a grove of giant old growth trees covered in vines. “Up there” Solomon says while pointing. I look and see two black raccoon sized animals skimming the tree tops so fast they look to be gliding. “Tigres” Solomon says as if its a question but not really. I've never seen anything like them but I'm pretty sure that not only do tigers not live here, but if they did, they probably wouldn't be all place and have long black fuzzy tails.

Solomon had never seen them before and was convinced that they were going to for the chickens down below. I agreed to look it up on the computer and he nodded. On the way back I pointed out an ant about the size of pointer finger. It had to be the largest ant I’d ever seen. Solomon told me it was really poisonous which he says about everything and we moved on. We go back to work and I'm still trying to impress Solomon and the kids with my extensive skill with the stick axe. Solomon points out a group of cocoa fruits that are straight up from me and really high up. I go for it. I get the first two go for the last one which is so high up that I'm standing on my tip toes. Crack. I've got it. Crack. It hits a branch on the way down. Crack. It lands straight on my head forcing my teeth to clinch and slightly knocks me out. I open my eyes hunched over staring at the ground and Solomon is trying to ask if I'm okay, but the pain hasn't hit yet and I'm focused on the largest brown tarantula I've ever seen directly below me. Solomon tells me that is super dangerous and machetes the back end of it off and then asks me again if I'm okay. I say yes trying to act strong and he picks up the fruit that weighs close to 2lbs. “You broke the fruit open with your head, I've never seen that before” he says while laughing. I try to tell him that I have a tough skull but I've also already told him before that I broke the right side of my face so I'm sure that he thinks I'm just a walking disaster.

We keep working and I shrug off the fact that I've got a bump on my head, my eyes are swelling up from some type of allergies, and I'm now tired as hell from exhausting all my energy trying to show off. We keep going I ask when we are going to be done. This stirs Solomon and he goes into a speech about how long he sometimes works and how the last volunteer tried to work for a day and did the same thing. I say okay we keep going. I'm chopping and not really paying attention when Solomon tells me to look directly above my head on the tree branch that is about a foot above me. It's a sloth and big one and he is eye level to me. The sloth slowly moves his head towards me while saddled in between the branches of a cacao tree and closes his eyes for a second then turns back and rests his head back on his arm. Not a real exciting creature but I've never seen one this close. I could probably pick him up out of the branch and hold him in my arm and he wouldn't move. They do have entire eco systems of growing organisms in their fur so picking them up would probably not be that good. In fact it was one of the things we were told in training not to touch. So I touched it. I'm not dead yet there is always tomorrow.

I finally convinced Solomon that I was going to hurt myself again if we didn't stop and we headed back down the steep grade. I took a good hard bucket shower, threw on some clean clothes and headed back to Solomon's house. We sat and talked for awhile until he finally brought up a question I could tell had been on his mind for quite sometime. “Why do gringos like animals so much” he asked me while I shoveled sauteed tofu into my mouth. This was a good question and one that tells so much about the difference in cultures. These people see these animals as food because they are poor. They eat everything they can that doesn't cost money and until the day they are able to go to the store and buy whatever they would like, they will continue to do so. I answered “ because we like to see animals that we have never seen before and we like to see them in nature.” I went on “if there are enough of these animals here then you can also make money by showing them to dumb gringos too so maybe we shouldn't kill anymore.” I could see Solomon thinking. How do you tell someone to starve for awhile so that the white people will come and give you money to see them. It's a hard concept to grasp and eating boiled plantains 3 times a day is my idea of hell so I don't blame them for trying to get a little protein in their diets at least once every couple days.

I hate to say it but to save the environment, clean up the trash, and bring the animals back into this place it is going to need a reason to do so other than its just bad. They are going to need tourism and enough of it to make it worth while. I know I saw a lot of stuff today that I would pay someone to see and if you told me I could make my chocolate on top of that I would for sure put down some money. Working with tourism is going to be big part of what I'm going to do here because it will not only bring money, but it might save this place from complete deforestation, and desecration. It might even inspire some of the locals to learn other things such as biology, and English.

The rest of my day I spent sleeping and walking back and forth to the small little store to buy cookies. I leave for the big city tomorrow and come back here in two weeks to stay for two years. I better find a good past time.........