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I have one cocoa
tree in my back garden. It is in the shade of some hoary plantain
trees. The cocoa pod is aesthetically one of my favourite fruits. I
love its sunglow gold complexion when ripe; its muscularity, the way
the pod rests on the tree like an elongated breast. Today is my first
taste of the cocoa bean. On opening the pod, one discovers the beans
wrapped in thick white pulp. I am presently sucking on the pulp, which
tastes a little like Soursop or Lychee, and also reminds me of the
smoothness and creaminess of bananas. The taste of the bean is
acquired. It is a contrasting bitter taste.

For the past two weeks,
we have been sun drying some beans. Today they will go in the oven for
about twenty minutes, the chaff surrounding the beans will be removed
and I will blend the beans to produce a bitter dark powder, which
because we have skipped the fermentation stage will not have as strong
a chocolate flavour. It is the fermentation simply carried out by
spreading the beans in wooden crates or baskets lined with banana
leaves for two to seven days that help to produce the intense flavour
of chocolate.

I have in front of
me a bar of Cameroun’s Chococam Mambo dark chocolate. Unlike the
familiar and touted best worldwide brands, its dark chocolate is only
50% cacao content. The best dark chocolate should have at least 70%
cacao content. I have also in front of me three other brands that I am
savouring and comparing; Green and Black’s organic dark chocolate
(shorter bite, light, sweet); Menier’s Chocolat Patissier (very, very
smooth texture, slight chew with a pleasant bitter aftertaste) and
Lindt Excellence’s Mint Intense (chewiest texture, spreads between the
teeth, almost too refined).

Cameroun must be highly commended for
producing any form of chocolate. They are a small country with a high
poverty rate. They are also the fourth largest producers of cocoa in
Africa after Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and yours dearest, Nigeria. When
the packet of Mambo is opened, the smell of the chocolate is strong,
full and amazing.

Unfortunately, its
taste is disappointing and it has too much sugar in it. Nevertheless,
I wonder why Cameroun can produce chocolate as a national export and
Nigeria can’t or won’t. I consulted Mr. Anthony Ubi, special adviser
to the Cross River State government on processing marketing and
packaging, on why Cross River State as the second largest producer of
cocoa in Nigeria can’t make chocolate. Here I am after all in my
backyard, fermenting and sunning beans, roasting them, effectively
making hot chocolate.

Cacao nibs fully
fermented and dried are now being sold in developed countries as a
super food. There are all kinds of research on how healthy it is to
eat raw cacao, and how much more antioxidant flavonoids they have than
red wine and tea. Mr. Ubi claims that the international buyers’ hold
on the cocoa coming out of Nigeria and other African countries is like
that of the Mafia. West Africa produces 70% of the cocoa used to
produce chocolate in Western countries. In order to turn cocoa into
chocolate, and to break the Mafia’s monopoly, the Nigerian government
has to be willing to commit four times the cost of growing cocoa pods
into the industry. The Nigerian

government is
unwilling to do this. As usual, it head is up its backside. By the
way, the world’s processed chocolate market is worth $60 billion. When
the cocoa growers sneeze in Nigeria, it sends panic waves to the
international market. All that influence and power and potential, and
so much indifference and laziness on our part. Even our trees are said
to be old, the industry long in need of new cocoa producing trees.

One should not of course be allowed to go on and on about chocolate
in such dire terms. Chocolate is exciting, delicious, healthy, an
aphrodisiac, a guiltless replacement for sex for those whose hearts are
set against fornication. So here is my little contribution to the
moral right standing of my fellow Nigerians: My beans are brought in
from the sun and roasted in the oven till they give off a wonderful
sweetish smell almost like baking pastry. The beans out of the oven
are shelled, revealing dark soil coloured beans. To the shelled beans I
add half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, half a dried Cameroonian pepper,
the scrapped insides of a vanilla pod and plenty of cinnamon bark. I
blend all the ingredients in my dry mill.

The end result looks like
any hot chocolate powder and smells just as good. This blend is cooked
in hot water with milk and good quality honey like the old world Aztec
would have done until a thick chocolate drink is produced. A whisk is
applied to the blend to give it a frothy appearance. More milk and
pepper is added to suit the drinker’s taste. And there’s the best,
the healthiest, the most delicious Nigerian hot chocolate made in my
own backyard, no emulsifiers, no junk and no fattening cocoa butter. I
think I need to pat myself on the back!