Dicing With Death: Ivory Coast, Gold & Cocoa For a Few Nuggets

Titles to glory, with medals made of chocolate… “The infrastructure is in a desperate state,” complains one cocoa bean trucker who zigzags between the potholes. “When the prime minister came to the region they filled in the holes, but they never repaired the road!”

Cocoa producers are in despair. “Getting the product out of the forest is a major problem. You leave here in the morning, but you don’t know if you’ll get there by night.”  Yakou is one of the last drivers willing to supply the most remote villages. There’s only 45 kilometres to travel and it takes him between 8 and 10 hours to get there! The journey is so demanding that his son, who helps him during the vacations, doesn’t want to inherit the family’s one item of wealth: the truck.

But nothing in the world would make him abandon his father. “My father’s brave, he’s a fighter!” To confront the highways, which are that in name only, Ivory Coast mechanical geniuses construct a replica of a 1970s minibus, part by part. The Badjan! Zoum owns one, but like the majority of drivers, he does not have the means to maintain it… “You see us cutting and welding the parts because we don’t have the means to buy new ones.”

Today, cocoa no longer brings in sufficient revenues so some people are tearing up the trees to search for gold! The challenge to the people of the Ivory Coast is huge, but their determination is even greater… 

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