Cocoa passion on oil-rich
island
By Tim Butcher, BBC, Sao Tome and Principe
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
 |
Cocoa plantation
Photo by Sun News Publishing |
|
|
The island of Principe, off the west coast of central Africa,
has struck gold... black gold. But amid the frenzied drilling
for their new-found oil riches, one Italian man is determined
to restore the island's reputation for producing the best
cocoa in the world.
For the cocoa growers of Principe, monkeys, not dogs, are
a man's best friend.
They provide quality control for new plants and, in the eyes
of a plantation owner like Claudio Corallo, they are more
than welcome.
"Monkeys are good at choosing only the best cocoa pods,
which they open and then strip off the beans inside,"
he explained as we stomped through the tropical undergrowth.
"They stuff their mouths until their cheeks swell but
all they want is the sweet mush on the outside of the bean.
"Once they have sucked them dry they spit them out all
at once and they germinate on the ground. If I see a cluster
of seedlings out in the jungle I know they must be top-quality
plants straight from a monkey's mouth."
Unique
Overhead the foliage shuddered and branches cracked but all
I saw of a group of mona monkeys was some fast-moving shadows.
We ploughed on through the bush, Claudio looking as cool and
relaxed as you would expect of a well-to-do Tuscan born in
Florence, and me simply looking sweaty and clumsy.
Principe lies almost plum on the equator off Africa's west
coast and is covered in dense primary rainforest, kept lush
by temperatures and humidity levels more akin to a pressure
cooker.
It was formed by undersea volcanic activity and was never
actually part of Africa so, like the Galapagos Islands off
the Americas, it has its own unique ecosystem rich in birds,
orchids and other flora.
Some of the birds have wonderful sounding names like Dohrn's
Thrush-babbler and I was half hoping to catch a sight of one.
But when my glasses steamed up for the umpteenth time I gave
up and concentrated on what Claudio was saying.
'Sensational'
"Now here you see a cocoa plant and just look at the
size of the stem," he said enthusiastically.
It looked pretty big to me, about the width of a telegraph
pole, and was heavy with the red, orange and yellow pods that
grow - rather bizarrely to my eye - straight out from the
trunk.
"This is why this place is so special," Claudio
was whispering. "These cocoa plants pre-date all modern
hybrids of today's mass market.
"This is an ancient plant producing cocoa with a taste
more authentic than any other in the world."
I am no chocolate connoisseur but in the cool of Claudio's
hi-tech factory - an old shipping container with air-conditioning
- my first experience of his chocolate was unforgettable.
The Corallo family does not yet have shiny wrappers or packaging
and instead I was offered a few chippings from a solidified
pat at the bottom of a plastic tub.
Presentation might have been poor but the taste was sensational
- a deep, rich chocolate flavour garnished, in this case,
with tiny nuggets of ginger.
And what is more, my amateur enthusiasm is shared by some
of the world's best chocolatiers.
The buyer for Fortnum and Mason in London's Piccadilly raves
about Claudio's work to revive a plantation set up almost
200 years ago by Portuguese colonists.
Empire-building
Back in the 19th Century, the Portuguese built "rocas",
or plantations, all over Principe and Sao Tome on a scale
that beggars belief.
Some of them were the size of Versailles with manor houses,
schools, churches, clinics, offices, even cobbled streets.
But it was all done on the back of slave labour, so brutal
these little islands almost sparked a war between Britain
and Portugal in the 1800s.
When the islands won independence in 1975, the cocoa price
collapsed, production fell, and the jungle swiftly moved to
reclaim the terraces.
For Claudio it has taken years to restart production at the
Terreiro Velho plantation.
Principe is so economically backward that until the mid-1990s
the only means of transport was a fleet of tractors, and so
remote that to travel there from the African mainland took
several days' sailing.
It has been a labour of love to just make the two-storey plantation
house habitable.
"The undergrowth reached almost to the first floor and
we had been working three months before we found a 30-foot
staircase in the garden reaching down to a terrace,"
he said, as he prepared coffee on a rickety Chinese oil burner.
Constant battle
Claudio's wife, Bettina, has recently recovered from cerebral
malaria.
The driers - crucial to cocoa production - had to be imported
piece by piece from Italy; even now, nine years later, Claudio
is camping on a homemade bed in a room with no windows and
only part of a roof.
But with a workforce of 30 local labourers who are - thanks
to the plantation - earning a wage for the first time in decades,
Claudio has clear plans to turn what is now a modest cottage
industry into something bigger.
Only then will he worry about putting the roof back on the
house.
There is an old wives' tale on the islands about a lucky goblin
found deep in the forest known as a gou-gou.
If you are fortunate enough to meet a gou-gou you must catch
him - so the story goes - feed him well, and he will make
endless wealth for you; a bit like the golden goose story
of my childhood.
The gou-gou myth seems to me a pretty accurate description
of the oil fever which is gripping the islands right now.
If any oil revenue comes it will be a long time in the future.
Better, in my opinion, to rely on cocoa and Claudio's tree-top
troop of monkey helpers.
|
