Though security concerns made it impossible for me to visit the Ivory Coast when I was writing The Bitter Side of Sweet, in the summer of 2013 I was able to visit RAFAVAL, a fair trade cocoa plantation in Haiti, where the women of the small town of Limonade were using the profits from the sale of chocolate to help themselves, their community, and their families.
Fair trade chocolate, produced by companies that guarantee a minimum price to growers even when international prices dip, is by no means the only answer. Nor is it an answer free of its own complications, as any long-term solution must address empowerment and education as well as economics. However, it is one way of tackling the root problem: the grinding poverty of the small growers who produce cacao.
To find out more about the issues raised in The Bitter Side of Sweet, including more ideas on things you can do to help end child slavery in chocolate production (or to share ideas of your own!), please visit my website, www.TaraSullivanBooks.com.
Tara Sullivan
June 1, 2015
SOURCES
The Dark Side of Chocolate. Documentary film. Directed by Miki Mistrati and U. Roberto Romano. 2010. www.thedarksideofchocolate.org
International Cocoa Organization. www.icco.org
Off, Carol. Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2006.
UNICEF. www.unicef.org
World Cocoa Foundation. www.worldcocoafoundation.org
GLOSSARY
Attiéké • (Bambara) Cassava ground into couscous-like grains
Aw ni sógóma • (Bambara) Good morning. Used when speaking to a group.
Awó • (Bambara) Yes
Ayi • (Bambara) No
Hakéto • (Bambara) Excuse me
I ka da tugu • (Bambara) Shut up
I ni cé • (Bambara) Thank you / Welcome
Je suis désolé. J’étais juste . . . • (French) I’m sorry. I was just . . .
Kedjenou • (Bambara) Chicken with braised vegetables
La brosse • (French) The bush. Refers to wild, rural areas.
Les pistes • (French) The tracks / trails.
Mun kéra? • (Bambara) What’s wrong? / What’s going on?
Nbah i ni sógóma • (Bambara) Good morning. (Response if the speaker is male.)
Pisteur • (French) A man who drives the back trails of the Ivory Coast to the farms to collect the dried cacao beans and bring them to central weigh stations.
Pourquoi tu ne parles pas français? • (French) Why are you not speaking French?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Launching a book is a huge project that takes a great deal of time and many helping hands. My thanks are due to many people for this one:
To Nick, my amazing husband. Thank you for all your love, support, and logistical wrangling. I could never have done this without you.
To the small army of friends who came and played with my children in four-hour weekend shifts so that I could get edits done. Daniela DeSousa, Vanessa Martinez, Alexis Kruza, Trish and Steve Ryan, and everyone else who stopped by or helped out . . . without you, this book could not have been finished on time.
To my children, for continuing to be excited that “Mom writes books,” even when that means that she went and hid from you for hours at a time.
To my mom and dad: thank you for your unending enthusiasm, and your constant willingness to talk about your grand-books.
To my writers’ group: Katie Slivensky, Lisa Palin, Lauren Barrett, Julia Maranan, Annie Cardi, and A. C. Gaughen. Also to my amazing agent, Caryn Wiseman. As always, you rock!
To Josie Doak, insightful beta reader and wonderful friend.
To Jerry Fatal, who kindly fact-checked my story based on his experiences growing up in Man, Ivory Coast. And to Lydia Kang, medical doctor and fellow 2k13 debut author of Control, who figured out a way for Seydou to get better.
To the women of the RAFAVAL community collaborative in Limonade, Haiti, for showing me with boundless enthusiasm how to make chocolate.
To Alexis Kruza (again!), for coming to Haiti with me. Thank you for accompanying me to interpret, for staying in spite of fallen mosquito nets and cockroaches the size of mice, and for carrying my sickly self home through a variety of international airports. Let us never again mention the moths.
To those whose research went before me and helped me begin to understand the complex story behind chocolate when I wasn’t able to travel to the Ivory Coast myself. I learned a great deal from the journalism of both Órla Ryan (Chocolate Nations: Living and Dying for Cocoa in West Africa) and Carol Off (Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet). In fact, the chilling lines, “You know what happens to people who ask questions. And you know what happens to people who answer them,” are a paraphrase of a line from Ms. Off’s book, when one of her sources in the Ivory Coast stopped talking to her for fear of his life. I salute these women for their bravery and their dedication to illuminating the truth.
To everyone at G. P. Putnam’s Sons: thank you for loving my stories like they were your children and for taking such good care of them. Special thanks to Cindy Howle, Chandra Wohleber, Kate Meltzer, Cecilia Yung, and Annie Ericsson for all your excellent work on this book.
Lastly, to Stacey Barney. Having you as my editor makes the world sparkle. Thank you.
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