chocolate coated just action

I've returned from Sunny Dunedin and the JustAction08 and Freedom Congress08 gatherings. Both were full of highlights, lowlights and challenges. At Just Action we heard about many things, only one being the idea of fair trade and chocolate slaves. Forever in my head will be the description Danielle Strickland gave of Zion pointing at chocolate in a supermarket and yelling "slave, slave" My friend and I pondered chocolate later as we had planned to visit the Cadbury tour. Having been myself on a few occasions I was intent on going more for her benefit than my own. As we went on the tour wearing our protective headgear (as seen in pic) we came across a group of workers busy putting mini crunchie bars into bags. Our tour guide informed us that each person works a particular station for only 30 mins at a time and then they rotate. This helps stop them getting bored or OOUS (occupational overuse syndrome). They also rotate from one line to another. So they might work easter eggs and then roses chocolates.

As I reflected later on cadbury's policy to look after their staff, my thoughts drifted back to a video clip I had seen just 4 days earlier where a young man talked about what life was like as a cocoa slave. He showed the welts, scars and wounds that covered his body, he demonstrated how he and others like him were tied up and beaten, and he told the reporter that he had worked for 5 years for his "employer" and had never ever been paid one cent for all his labour.

The contrast between the two was as far apart as they could be in terms of their working enviornment, job satisfaction, employer etc.....yet they were both working because of a common occurance....my love and volumous consumption of chocolate.

I must confess that I have finally begun to view chocolate differently. I've dabbled with fair trade chocolate in the past, but that caramello has kept calling me back. However now I have a face and a story that speak into my heart about the origins of my delicious treat. Now when I look at chocolate in the supermarket I'm pointing my finger and yelling "slave slave" (well on the inside anyway).