Chocolate's bittersweet economy

Whether timber and diamonds exploited from war zones or toys and clothes made in Asian sweatshops, the list of goods that are consumed in the west on the back of human misery to increase corporate profits is very large. To this list we can add cocoa for making Chocolates, often collected in war zones and by child labor in east Africa, where people, as elsewhere, are pressured by corporations seeking the lowest cost of goods without consideration of the human consequences.

Outside the village of Sinikosson in southwestern Ivory Coast, along a trail tracing the edge of a muddy fishpond, Madi Ouedraogo sits on the ground picking up cocoa pods in one hand, hacking them open with a machete in the other and scooping the filmy white beans into plastic buckets. It is the middle of the school day, but Madi, who looks to be about 10, says his family can’t afford the fees to send him to the nearest school, five miles away. “I don’t like this work,” he says. “I would rather do something else. But I have to do this….

Posted by alexander
I have visited the slums of San Paulo, and I have seen the northern lights from the Lapland's, rather than exploring the world between CNN and FOX, as many of my countrymen do. The reference to Alexander has much to do with the quest for knowledge...