Joanne Husain visits a bean to bar chocolate house on the other side of the world.
On the eve of Solomon Islands 46th Independence day (July 7), we set out early from our hotel in the capital of Honiara on a sunny Saturday morning. Roadside and seaside markets are already brimming with vendors and vibrant energy. The air is alive with excited chatter as people proudly display national colours, and flags adorn cars and buildings in preparation for the multi-island nation’s Independence Day parade.
As we journey eastward to our destination – the Amazing Grace Boutique Cocoa Farm – the lively scenes of Honiara quickly give way to humble wooden and thatched structures among lush greenery.
Turning south off the main road means embarking on a rugged mountain ascent. Instead we turn north onto a flat dirt road that eventually leads to Tenaru Beach. As we make the left turn a heap of cocoa beans outside a wooden house sends its chocolatey aroma swirling in the wind. Cocoa trees line the quiet rural road. After a few more minutes of driving, we alight at a small footbridge. A diminutive figure emerges from the cocoa brandishing a machete and a warm smile, greeting us in pidgin “Welkam to Amazing Grace.”
Grace Fekau owns and operates Amazing Grace Boutique Cocoa Farm located at Tenaru on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. She ushers us to a small clearing to begin the farm tour and we exchange introductions. It is immediately apparent that her tiny stature and almost 80 years of age do not diminish her courage or strength. Under the shade of coconut palms, we tramp through neat rows of cocoa trees with banana leaves composted around their roots. She pulls aside a branch, carefully raising her machete to deftly cut open a fat yellow pod.
Cocoa people
Grace offers us the fruit, “You are from Trinidad and Tobago, you are cocoa people!” We savour the familiar white pulp as we continue our tour.
The farm is only a hectare, and like most small cocoa growers across the globe, Grace raises other crops. Bananas, citrus, breadfruit, pineapples, cassava, taro (dasheen) are in the garden surrounding the fermentation and drying areas.
“Almost every tree you see I planted over the 40 years I have lived here.”
Her farm was once land that belonged to Levers Pacific Plantations. Grace’s husband, an employee of Levers, was able to acquire the land when the company surrendered their holdings. The property became their home, and little by little, Grace began to transform the former coconut plantation.
Subsistence farming is the predominant occupation of rural Solomon Islanders, with 80 per cent of the population relying on agriculture for household consumption and to supplement income through the sale of surplus produce.
As a housewife, Grace replants the land not just for food, but also for beautification. The property is lush with flowering shrubs and trees. However, it was only after her husband’s death in 2000 that her cocoa odyssey began: “I am not an agriculture woman or educated woman, but I grow co
