The Chocolate Problem

Here is a heads up; the moral of this story is: Let's please not buy and hand out slave labor created chocolates on Halloween (or any other day). 

I know, I know... it's hard.  When I start to think about the sometimes sordid or sad sources of my clothes, my shoes, our furniture, our phones, our food, the stuff I put on my face, the stuff I put in our hair... I may as well rend all my clothes, tear out my hair and run screaming from our house.

It's hard. It's hard to live out our deeply held values in this world right now.  Everything we buy, everything we use... somewhere along the line somebody, or some animal, or some planet, gets hurt. We live in a complicated, ultra-connected world.

But using the philosophy that perfect is the enemy of good... or the "starfish" philosophy, it's not that complicated.  We have to start somewhere. Right now I focusing on sticking to our values when I buy what is going in our bodies, with the goal of expanding our conscientious shopping to clothes and toys and on and on...

Every choice I make while shopping, eating, using or re-using has an impact.  Every choice. Some of the choices we make as a family are easy, some not so...

Sometimes when I'm feeling very motivated to eat organic, humanely sourced food a diner menu can reduce me to frustrated tears. Eggs? Nope, those poor tortured laying hens who never see the sun! Bacon? Tortured pigs with their little tails cut off! Pancakes? Now is that organic flour or the mix with all that sugar and additives? Fruit? How far has that melon been trucked?

I'll just have a cup of coffee. Oh dear, that is fair trade shade grown organic, right?

I'll just have a glass of water. Oh, they aren't fracking near the reservoir are they?

You see what I mean? Everything is tainted. Nothing is clean and simple. So I get it. If ordering breakfast in a diner can be this complicated... grocery shopping? Online shopping? Christmas shopping!?!

Here is something very simple:

Most chocolate is harvested and processed by child slaves in Africa.

(Hershey's, Cadbury, Nestle... all the big names do it.  Those kisses started with little African kids picking and pounding cocoa pods. How do you think such a labor intensive food can be so cheap?)

Here is the BBC video about the slave trade.

 Here, here, and here are some great articles and blog posts with lots of details.

We don't need to buy this chocolate. Not when there are wonderful, affordable candies or chocolates to buy.  Like Trader Joes brand, or Whole Foods brand, or these, or these, or these.

So, how 'bout giving out a little freedom on October 31?

Free

You remember those kids working on fishing boats in Ghana? Remember those villagers so desperate to have a productive livelihood that they enslaved children?

24 of the children are free. One village is on its way to productivity without slavery.

What struck me most reading this was how many of the fishermen had been slaves themselves. How many of them had been taken from their families, never went to school and never knew a day of rest... and how these same former slaves turned captors gave the children gifts of money and clothes as they left for freedom.  The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.

Read more about it here.

Mercy Project/Labor Day

Happy Labor Day!

Today Andrew and I don't have to work. We'll be taking the kids to their favorite park, maybe do some swimming, and most definitely have some ice cream.  Today we'll enjoy one of the last days of summer together as a family.

Most people around the world will be working today. They'll be at the check out counter at our local grocery store. They'll be scooping ice cream, monitoring the pool changing room, driving trucks, harvesting tomatoes, picking apples, fishing.

Some of the people working today will be children. Some of the children working today will be slaves.

Mercy Project Ghana

One of the amazing surprises of becoming a family through international adoption is how my eyes have been opened to the world in a whole new way.  I've make connections across the country with other bloggers and mothers of Ethiopian children.  I've read books and articles and histories of Africa that I may not have picked up before Daniel and Lily came home.  Most of the things I've learned on this journey have enriched our lives and opened my mind and heart wider and wider.  Some of the things I've learned have made me weep.

All over the world people are working today without pay, without protection, without recourse to legal or social support.  There are men picking tomatoes in Florida who are locked into dorms at night. There are women being trafficked into the sex industry, here in America. There are children working in mines, picking coffee and chocolate, making sneakers and sweaters.

Today, Labor Day, I'm joining with 100 other bloggers to celebrate the work of Mercy Project Ghana.  Mercy Project works with fishing communities on Lake Volta, Ghana.  The Lake was created 50 years ago by a dam, and is home to many fishing communities.  Over the decades the fishing stock has been declining (as stocks have all across our Earth). This has led these desperate communities to turn to child slavery.  Child slaves are small, require little food and no money.  They don't rebel, and have fingers just the right size for the intricate nets required to fish ever smaller, elusive fish.  Where do they come from? Other desperate families who are tricked into believing their children will lead a better life on the lake.

Why do I care? Why is an adoptive mother now advocating for the end of child slavery? Because I now know, as I didn't fully before, how small the world is.  There are two little children sitting next to me, happily watching cartoons, who were once part of a hungry, desperate family.  If there had been a fishing community trafficker or a chocolate farm "employment" recruiter in their village, instead of an orphanage, they may have ended up one of the children in this video.  This is no insult to their Ethiopian family.  Desperate, hungry people make desperate choices.  Choosing another life for your children because you have no hope for their future with you is a desperate, difficult act of faith. Some families are lucky; some families are tricked.  Some children end up in loving families. Some children end up living in slavery. When I look around my home, I see so many products that may have been picked, mined or produced by slaves, or made by people who are so underpaid and unprotected they may as well be enslaved.  Our world is so, so small.

Today, Labor Day, people are working all over the world.  But this month, hundreds of children on Lake Volta will stop working. They will go to school; they will go to the doctor.  They will be reunited with their families.

Mercy Project has been working with fishing communities to establish more productive, less labor intensive fishing methods. They have been making it possible for these communities to thrive without slaves.  The children will be freed.

See how it will happen here.

Learn more here and here.

This Labor Day I'm celebrating not working. I hope you'll join me.

Facebook: mercyproject