I was shocked by the email I received this week from Stop the Traffik.
Nearly half the worlds chocolate comes from Cote D’Ivoire, in Africa.
12,000 children have been trafficked into cocoa farms in Cote D’Ivoire.
12000!!!!
I read that statistic as Joe, Beth and Tom were eating a chocolate bar nearby.
I shivered.
It was a chilling feeling as I realised that if circumstances were different it could by my children, that could have been stolen from us to work in a cocoa farm.
When we buy chocolate we are being forced to be oppressors ourselves as we have no guarantee that the chocolate we eat is ‘traffik free’.
Diabate and Traoré had left their village in Mali to go to Ivory Coast looking for enough money to afford a bicycle, but they were sold to a man who had paid 50,000 West African Francs (about £50) for the two boys and he wanted the money back—in labour. The boys from Sirkasso met about twenty others in the same predicament and learned that no one was ever paid. They slept in a rectangle-shaped mud hut that initially had windows but when some boys found they could escape during the night, the windows were sealed shut. Diabate and Traoré remember eating mostly bananas, though they would gobble up the cocoa beans, as others did, whenever they got the chance. Many months passed, and the boys forgot what the purpose had once been for this adventure. Life became a struggle to exist, then hardened to despair.
They gave up thinking of escape. They were under constant threat of beatings if they were caught trying to flee—and they had seen several boys treated savagely—they were actually spooked by a belief that they were under a spell. Read more in Carol Off’s book “Bitter Chocolate”.
We can do something really simple here by buying our chocolate which is guaranteed to come from traffik free sources. You can see a list here, and a lot of brands are stocked in high street shops and supermarkets.
Why not commit to buy traffik free chocolate and go to the chocolate campaign page to see what else we can do.
The Shiny Headed Prophet 
I am often convicted about fair trade items generally and specifically chocolate (I received this mailout too). Whenever I buy chocolate it’s always fair trade now (with only one or two exceptions – often when the need for a twix arises!). However having just been to the cash and carry to restock our tuck shop it got me thinking about our responsiblity as purveyors of tuck. As I wandered the aisles thinking about it, I realised that the reality is that if I only stocked fair trade chocolate, from our cash and carry that’s only one sort of milk chocolate bar. The principle of something is obviously the most important thing … push comes to shove, it’s difficult though!
yep I always noticed that C&C’s have never been that fair trade minded.I’m also not sure how we change that – I guess we need to add our voice to the demand and convince other users to ask as well for fair trade chocolate to be stocked.