Ghana is one of the world’s largest coco exporters… and yet it fails in the chocolate production department (one type of chocolate here… and it’s crap). Meaning though that most rural villages in southern Ghana have coco and their main crop…including mine.

The process that the coco goes through before it is produced into actual chocolate is an in depth, time consuming, and rigorous process to produce the highest quality coco. (This is the process that I have witnessed with my own eyes, and been explained to by the locals of my village… but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other methods to the coco madness.)

Step 1: Letting the coco grow…

I have been spending countless time with my ‘host family’ (my host family is actually my land lady and her family… but they have taken me under their wing, making me feel like I’m part of their family) in the bush at their farm drinking palm wine and cracking open coco pods to learn about this in depth process… They have a random plot of land filled top to bottom with coco trees… (I wish I could say that it is an orchard sitting on a 5, 10 or 100-acre lot, but the amount of land is given at random, meaning it starts at this bush and extends until that tree with a coco tree here and another two there.) All over this plot of land there are young and old trees, as my land lady points out that a few of these trees were planted when the land belonged to her in-laws. The coco grows in a pod usually in two’s off the various branches and the trunk of the tree. It starts out a green color and when it is ripe and ready to be picked it is usually bright yellow in color.

Step 2: Plucking the coco…

I’ve been trying to understand when the coco season actually is, but every time I ask I get a different answer. Yes I have been in Ghana 7 months, and every day I see farmers coming back form farm carrying fresh coco seeds on their head, as well as I see coco out to dry. So the season as far as I’m concerned is on going (maybe it will peter off as the dry season wears on.) So on a weekly basis my family has been going into the bush to pluck the coco. The plucking of the coco involves a long bamboo stick with a sharp knife attached to one end and someone extending this knife/stick thing into the coco tree and slicing the stem of the coco pod off. Then another person gathers all the fallen pods in a big silver bowl and carries them back to where the rest of the group is sitting and cracking open the pods.

Step 3: Cracking open the coco pods…

my land lady cracking open the coco pods

the inside of a coco pod

This could be my favorite process, as I sit for hours with my cutlass in hand cracking open the coco pods and scooping out all the innards. The inside of a coco pod has so to say 4 sections and in each section there is a line of coco covered in this white, sugary, yet milky looking covering (delicious to suck on.) We scoop the innards into one bowl, and toss the shell into another pile (which will eventually be burned and then turned into the famous Ghanaian Black Soap).

the innards of many coco pods

freshly cracked open coco pods

Step 4: Fermentation…

This is where the process gets a little fuzzy… as everyone gives me a different answer, but it all revolves around the coco being fermented… or rather dried. When the coco, wet, and slimy finally makes it back to the house (farms in Ghana aren’t like farms in the US, rather the main processing of the product is processed at ones house, whether it is the rice, maize or coco drying this all happens at or rather in the compound of where the Ghanaian lives). According to my land lady the coco must sit covered (usually with banana leaves) for 3 or 4 days to start the curing process, and then on the 3^rd or 4^th day the coco is laid out to dry, and every few hours it is turned to make sure that the coco is getting evenly dry. The Ghanaians don’t depend on any sort of dryer, rather the equatorial sun. In the drying out, curing process the coco is rigorously gone through to pick out the bad coco, rocks, and any other waste that may have snuck in.

almost dried coco

Step 5: Selling to the Ghanaian Coco Board…

I’m not sure how is works for other villages, but in my little Podunk Ghanaian Village, there is one man who is on the Ghanaian Coco Board. So everyone in my village sells their dried/cured coco to him. There is usually a set price, and last time I checked for 1 Kilo of dried coco it was 3.20 Ghana Cedi (the local currency) and for 30 kilos of dried coco it was 96.00 Ghana Cedi. And for one bag, being 65 Kilos, it is 200 Ghana Cedi (maybe 170 USD). The man then in turns sells the coco to the actual Ghanaian Coco Board, making 1 cedi for every bag of coco.

Step 6: Exporting…

Ok so now I’m totally speculating, but from the Ghanaian Coco Board the coco is sold to company such as Nestle, and Cadburys for the production of actual chocolate and other chocolate products.

Mr. Jon with all the dried coco before he sends if off to the Ghana Coco Board

(I always laugh when I receive chocolate in my packages knowing that the original coco may of come from the country that I’m living in, and yet I have to have someone send me chocolate to help curb my chocolate cravings… don’t stop sending it.)