Fair Trade Chocolate in Cyprus

For many years now - at least fifteen - we have avoided all Nestlé products due to their policies on baby  milk. This is pretty big in the UK, at least in Christian and/or home educating circles, and isn't very hard to implement. Occasionally I have a slight hankering for a KitKat, but in general it's not a problem at all. I don't make a huge deal of it - when offered Nescafé or given After Eights, I accept with thanks. But I won't buy Nestlé products myself - at least, not knowingly. 

However, I've taken something of an ostrich-style stance about how chocolate is produced in general, or what other companies do. I was shocked out of my lethargy recently by reading that Mars conducts cruel animal experiments - totally unnecessary for human safety since chocolate is poisonous to most animals. This was a bit of a jolt, since we have been buying and very much enjoying plain chocolate Bounty bars, recently, and I do rather like Galaxy. 

It was only about a week later that our young teenage friend Jacob brought out the latest issue of his single-handedly produced youth magazine 'The Onymous'. The focus was on child slavery on chocolate farms. I knew, somewhere deep down, that a lot of chocolate was produced unfairly, but I suppose I had vaguely thought that although wages were extremely low for cocoa-bean pickers, they probably were still worth having, and that if people didn't buy regular chocolate, these impoverished workers would suffer. 

But Jacob's well-researched article made sobering reading. Chocolate slaves are young children, bought from their parents with promises of wealth, made to work long days with no breaks. They live in crowded, filthy conditions and are beaten cruelly if they slow down. 

Thankfully not all chocolate is produced this way.  Some beans are produced without slaves, sold by Fairtrade organisations. When Jacob wrote his article, the only fairly traded chocolate available in Cyprus was made by Green and Black's, one of the pioneer organic/fairtrade groups. And it wasn't easy to find. In our favourite supermarket, Metro, there are several Green and Black's bars available, but they're not shelved with all the other chocolate: instead, they are in the health food aisle along with other organic products, at the far end of the store. 

However, by the time 'The Onymous' was actually printed and distributed, some ordinary Cadbury bars bearing the fairtrade logo had started appearing amongst the other chocolate bars in Metro: 

When I spotted one, I started looking through the others to see how many there were. Not many, unfortunately - but in my search, a senior member of staff happened to be nearby, and asked if I was looking for something in particular. I pointed out the 'Fairtrade' logo, and he said that this bar was in a new shipment. He asked what the logo was, so I explained, and said that it was a good thing - that customers liked to buy fairly traded chocolate.  

A couple of days later, I spotted the same bars in our local Orphanides Express. Someone there was stacking the shelves, so I talked to her about the fairtrade logo too, and she seemed impressed.

Then I bought a small packet of 'chocos': 

An unoriginal name, and I suspect just an expensive way of packaging Dairy Milk (I haven't eaten them yet!) - but although fairtrade chocolate does often cost a little more than slave-produced chocolate, I'm now convinced that we should buy it more often. I asked myself if I wouldn't happily give a few cents - even a few euros - if I knew it would free a child from a life of slavery. Of course I would.  If the only way to increase the amount of fairly traded chocolate and persuade the growers to stop the slave trade is to vote with our purses... then it seems to me an excellent reason to spend a a little more on fairly traded chocolate. Even if it means buying fewer bars overall. 

I encourage anyone reading this to do likewise. And if you can talk to a member of the shop staff about fairtrade chocolate, then perhaps they will buy more.... 

(Those who want to do this in Cyprus, but are dairy-free, lactose intolerant or vegan will probably have to stick to Green and Black's which do various plain chocolate brands but are rather more pricey still. But you could always get in touch with other fairtrade chocolate suppliers and ask them if they would consider exporting to this island)

Busy times for Tim

We've got so used to having Tim here for the past seven weeks that it's going to feel like having an empty nest all over again when he flies back to the UK next week. Still, he's been managing to ease us slowly into this state. Last week he was out every morning from 7.45am until nearly 1.00pm. He was a group leader at the local church SU-produced holiday club, 'Mission Rescue' which featured spies, and secret codes, and amazing rescue efforts.

Tim disguised himself as James Bond for the week - he was still smiling on Friday, though his bow tie seemed to have gone a little lop-sided:


(Photo kindly taken by my friend Sheila who had three children attending the club).

Note the secret code symbols in the background. They were pasted all around the walls of the church building for children to de-code.

Some of our small friends locally were able to attend the holiday club, which clearly caught their imagination; Lukas was wearing a different kind of disguise when we saw him on Friday evening:


Tim was pretty tired on Saturday, but there was no time to rest because the inter-church youth group had their variety night in the evening, to raise funds for their forthcoming camping trip to Troodos. Tim was part of the youth group for many years and is going to camp as a team leader, and co-ordinator of the music.

The variety night went well, with a mixture of items, from a skit about 'Veggie Tales'...


... to a newly formed choir, singing with aplomb:


I set up our video camera on a tripod to record the entire thing, but it takes time and effort to transfer that to the computer. So Tim had also asked me to film one item on my regular camera, since it's so much easier to upload. Holding it steady wasn't easy with several small people around me! Elina and Marie are singing 'Phantom of the Opera', with Tim accompanying; they only had a couple of rehearsals but I thought it went very well:

(The little girl doing her hair in front of the camera is my small friend Katie, Marie's six-year-old sister. )

Since I'd deleted almost all the photos from my camera to make room for these videos, I discovered that I still had room for more. So when Tim got up for his solo item, 'These are the things you don't say to your wife':


..I recorded that too:

(For anyone who didn't catch them all, the lyrics are here)

Since that was so short, I also had room to record Tim's third musical item, accompanying Marie in 'The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy'. They had only rehearsed this once, at our house, and perhaps once more at youth group; it's a pity nobody was doing the solo dance, but it seemed to go pretty well:

On Sunday morning there was a holiday club service at the Community Church, for which Tim was playing keyboard... in the afternoon he had a final camp leaders meeting, and then a good night's sleep, which is rather important before youth camp as he's unlikely to get much while there.

On Monday morning, he set off with around fifty teenagers and a few other adults for the Troodos mountains, thus moving us into the next adjustment stage before our nest is once again empty:


- and no, I didn't actually wait around to see them off, or even go with Richard to take Tim to the coach. My friend Sheila who was seeing off two of her children took that photo for me.