Fondue and Bangla

Well this is the next instalment of my blogposting just to let you know about my week.

So it's been a pretty busy week with having my Bangla exam on Thursday, putting the finishing touches on the Fondue parties, attending 2 fondue parties and going to an anti-trafficking workshop.

I'm not sure whether I've properly explained the significance of the chocolate fondue parties in my previous blogs but just in case I thought I would briefly summarise it now. Essentially during the last week of November Stop the Traffik are trying to raise awareness aboout trafficking in the chocolate industry. Nearly half the world's chocolate is made from cocoa grown in the Cote d'Ivoire in Africa. Over 12,000 children have been trafficked into these cocoa farms. The conditions they have they have to work in is appalling.

The Stop the Traffik website tells the story of a young boy who was trafficked from his home village in Mali to one of these cocoa farms. He was locked up in a shack at night with other boys where they would have to sleep amongst there own excrement with no light or ventilation in the shack. During the day he would work 12 - 14 hours lugging heavy sacks of cocoa. If he dropped one he would get beaten, if he asked for more food he would get beaten. This particular boy witnessed one boy die from overwork and too many beatings and this apparently is not an uncommon scenario. So, unless chocolate comes with the fairtrade mark, the likelihood is it will contain the blood of trafficked children.

The fondue parties are to raise awareness on a consumer level about trafficking in the chocolate industry in order to encourage everyone to eat fair trade (traffik free) chocolate. On a larger level the campaign is also to encourage the large chocolate companies to stop using trafficked cocoa in their chocolate and to demand traffik free cocoa from their suppliers.

Our first chocolate fondue in Dhaka happened on Wednesdnay night at a home mission group. We watched a really insightful DVD on the garment industry in Bangladesh, which we plan on brining back to the UK because it was so interesting and we discussed the trafficking issue whilst of course tucking into lovley chocolate fondue.

The next fondue was last night at the British ex pat club. The club had organised a bbq by the pool with loads of fairy lights round the place, a wonderful jazz band and chocolate fondues on all tables for the participants. It was a great night. I had loads of good conversations with people about trafficking, so hopefully there's a few more Fair Trade converts out there (although unfortunately not so freely available over here).

I would really encourage all of you to invite a few friends over and have a fondue. There's an organisers pack on the Stop the Traffik website and loads of resources to go with it. Even if you can't manage a fondue party you could make the decision not to eat chocolate unless it's fair trade.

Anyway, next week I'm doing a school assembly about trafficking, there's 3 more home groups having a fondue and I'm doing a youth group, so all in all a pretty busy week. I've also got a 2 day conference about tackling human trafficking in Dhaka, which should be really interesting because it basically involves everyone working on human trafficking at all levels, from government ministers to tiny little grass roots volunteers like me.

Also this week I had my Bangla exam on Thursday. I think it went ok and very glad it's over - just need to keep practicing what I've learned.

Andy's had a pretty good week in the workshop, designing, sanding and of course singing. I learned row, row row your boat at Bangla school the other day, so we were able to have a good sing along in the workshop.

Think that about covers it. Sorry for another long waffley blog. I'll try and write a bit more regularly now to reduce the length of these postings.