Cocoa Harvest

The other day, armed with machetes, buckets, sacks and boots, Martha and I went to harvest cocoa with her sister-in-law and her children. In between harvests the jungle attempts to reinsert itself into the area. In less than a year the orchard has become a nearly impenetrable wall of various plants, flowers, vines and trees. Banana trees grow like weeds, as do lilies, iris and just about everything else down here. In order to get to the first of the trees, some of the kids are sent in with machetes to clear the ground. In short order the weeds have all been cut and the trees begin to emerge. There are a few different varieties of cocoa trees. The pods start out green and turn yellow as they mature, or they start out a deep red and ripen into a fiery orange. The pods are large and football shaped, but deeply lobed like a pumpkin, and range in size from a little bigger than a baseball to a little smaller than an actual football. The thick rigid shell is expertly parted with a machete to expose the quarter sized seeds inside. The seeds themselves are coated in white mucus that has an intensely sweet flavor.

The adults and older kids take the machetes tree to tree cutting the pods from the trees while the kids collect the fallen pods. As we progress from one tree to another we have to clear a path. Some of the trees a have grown too large to reach the pods even with the machetes. The younger kids clamber up the trees and toss ripe fruit down to those collecting. As we go we encounter all kinds of interesting things. They shout warnings to me, the outsider who doesn’t know what he’s looking at. “careful, that kind of bush hides wasps!” “that tree has thorns!”. As we begin to spread out one of the twins is assigned to collect for me. I’m assuming he was also appointed as my chaperon. Heaven knows I need one.

I feel like such a child here sometimes. So many things that should be common sense that I’ve never been confronted with before. Even for something as simple as going down to the river to bathe, I was instructed never to do alone. At first I was a little indignant, it’s been a long time since I was that helpless. They explain that although it isn’t common, it is possible for the river to rise quickly and it can be very dangerous. There are also other dangers and Martha worries about me. I’m grateful. The reality is that I know nothing about my surroundings down here. I’ve always prided myself on be fairly observant as well, but down here it’s like I’m walking around with my eyes closed. Martha takes good care of me though. In fact, on our way to harvest the cocoa we were walking alongside one of the rivers here. Suddenly Martha told me step off the path and into the water. Without a second thought I did as she had said. It turns out that I had unwittingly attracted the attention of a Conga ant, which had been following me and was just about to climb up my leg when Martha had seen it and shouted her warning. Conga ants can get up to about the size of your thumb, but this one as a little bit smaller. If they bite you, it causes the area to swell up enormously and it causes a searing writhing pain lasts for hours and hours. Definitely don’t want to experience that.

By the end we had harvested probably about a hundred cocoa pods. I’m terrible at estimating, but the pile would have just filled a normal sized bathtub I’d say. It wasn’t a great harvest. Due in some part to weather, bugs and birds a lot of the pods were too damaged to harvest and others were rotten inside when we cut them open. We all gathered in more or less the center of the orchard and piled the pods in the middle. The women and older kids adeptly began to split the pods open. In one had they hold the machete in the middle of the blade and use the end to chop along the north/south axis. When they’re open they hand them off to the younger kids to scoop the seeds out into a 5 gallon bucket. I rather awkwardly attempted to help. Observing and then trying mirror their actions I started splitting one pod for every 3 or 4 of theirs. I’m sure Martha was convinced I was about to lose a finger. I wasn’t feeling so confident myself, to be honest. Sometimes as I try to help with things Martha will gently suggest that maybe I don’t help. This time I think she wanted to see how I’d do. Luckily I’m fairly resourceful and pretty good at figuring out solutions. I discovered that I had much more confidence if set the pod on the ground and chopped at it with my fingers well out of the way. First I chopped the ends off and then a single chop at the side split the shell enough to pry it apart with my fingers. It wasn’t pretty like theirs were, but I was able to get it done just about as fast. I also discovered that I had been an idiot and sat down on an ant pile….

When we were all done we packed up and loaded the buckets of seeds onto poles to be carried between two of the kids. Martha and I set about collecting some of the various plants we had cut down to replant at her new home. As we walked around she pointed out different plants and trees and explained some of their nutritional, medicinal or in some cases historical value.

All in all the harvest came out to about two 5 gallon buckets. They said that much will sell for about $50. It doesn’t seem like much but considering that the daily wage is between $10-$15 it isn’t too bad. $50 goes a long way down here with food, and every little bit helps.

For the record, the first two closeup photos are not mine.