48 COCOA 



is fitted with a movable blade that is worked by a 

 cord. 



The women and children have been gathering up 

 the pods as they fall, and heaping them at the foot of 

 the trees. Presently, some of them start piling up 

 the pods in big baskets. A few minutes later a little 

 procession moves off carrying the heavily laden 

 baskets on their heads. What a pretty picture the 

 carriers make as they wend their way through the 

 leaf-strewn spaces between the near neighbouring 

 trees the blues and browns of their draperies mingle 

 with the green and gold of the cocoa trees to present a 

 fascinating colour scheme, and the repetition of the 

 golden note in the headloads of ripe pods might well 

 be a master artist's touch. And is it not a joy to 

 watch these people walk ? They hold themselves so 

 well, and have such wonderful control of their move- 

 ments, thanks to a gymnastic exercise in which they 

 are trained from the time they can run alone the 

 exercise of balancing on their heads anything they may 

 have to carry. 



The pods that have been harvested to-day, together 

 with those which were gathered yesterday and left at 

 the foot of the trees, are being taken by the carriers 

 we are watching to a spot near the farmstead's com- 

 pound, ready to be broken open for the beans to be 

 extracted. 



We express a wish to follow the carriers, in order to 

 see something of the next stages in the work of cocoa 

 production. 



We can go where we like on the farm, we are told, 

 but to-day no one here will be doing any of the other 

 kinds of work we want to see; if we like to come again 

 to-morrow ... or the next day, perhaps. . . . Well, 



