May 3, 2020

Bitter Sweet

Sometimes we forget to think. Not necessarily do we not think about our actions, but we don’t always take time to just sit and think, let our mind wander, meditate in a way. That’s why I like our contemplative practices.

The one that made me think the most was ironically about something we don’t usually associate with any deep meaning: Chocolate. 

In the life I live, chocolate is connected to pleasure, sweetness, temptation. But we forget that all that derives from exploitation and child labor. 65% of the world’s cocoa is supplied by hundreds of thousands of children that are employed, oftentimes enslaved, in the Ivory Coast. This year alone, over 100,000,000 hours of child labor have taken place, and the estimated 1.8 million children who work in cocoa plantations worldwide are a great portion of that. “The World Counts” keeps track of those numbers live, and if you want to be shocked, just click here and watch them go up by the hundreds within seconds. 

After the practice I went to look up “ethical chocolate,” and found a website called “Slave Free Chocolate,” which made me feel sick to the stomach, because I didn’t think in this day and age we should still have to make sure that certain products are “slave-free.” What made me even more upset was that I didn’t know a single one of the brands that were listed. All my life I have been buying chocolate produced by slaves, child slaves. I have been part of the problem. And no one talks about it. 

That’s why I love these exercises. They make us think, they motivate us to learn about how to improve our world piece by piece. A single person can’t do much to solve a global issue, of course. But a single person can at least contribute. So if you want to join me in boycotting unethical chocolate brands from now on, you can use this list as a reference.