Cocoa seeds

A few weeks ago, I went to the Tate Modern to see Ai Weiwei’s much vaunted and critically acclaimed “Sunflower Seeds”. To the untrained, unlearned eye, it would have seemed unspectacular- a sea of over one hundred million of what seemed like small pebbles placed into a giant exhibition area, much like an expanse of Brighton beach indoors. This was especially so as Weiwei’s vision that we would touch and interact with the art was nipped in the proverbial bud by Health and Safety jobsworths as the herds of Londoners stamping on the seeds created some form of dust that was apparently unsafe. Bollocks. I think that the millions of Londoners walking away with a few seeds in their pockets and backpacks was more of an issue.

I say seeds, but this is incorrect. These were really porcelain replicas of sunflower seeds. They seemed identical but they were all unique and hand-crafted by families and individuals in the porcelain crafting region of China, Jingdezhen. Each ceramic seed was individually moulded, sculpted and hand painted by persons trained in the art working in family workshops and at home. By so doing, Weiwei turned the cliché of Made In China on its head: here it was in front of us- mass production alongside traditional craftsmanship. Weiwei explains in his video that sunflower seeds were a common street snack shared with friends which carried some association with Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution during 1966-1976 where Chairman Mao was depicted as the Sun and the people as sunflowers who turned towards him. The effort was poignant to me- the dignity and the desire to work of the Jingdezhen people was striking- they wanted and actively sought out more work and took pride in creating the sunflower seeds to perfection. It raised important questions about materialism and consumerism in today’s society. What is the dividing line between individuality and our mutual commonality.
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I couldn’t help, when viewing this exhibition, to ponder on the Caribbean condition. We have traditionally prided ourselves on our attention to detail, our individuality and our uniqueness- we are too small to mass produce anything. I couldn’t help making an analogy with the seeds that would be used to represent our condition, were such an exhibition to be launched. I thought we could use cocoa seeds- cocoa representing a traditional export that was meticulously grown and harvested, resplendent in their jewel colours of red and yellow, an export that has now become secondary to the cheap fast tourist product. I recall days of traipsing fields of cocoa, shaded by overarching canopies of nutmeg, breaking the prized pods open and sucking on the opaque, almost cataract pulp of the fruit, careful not to ingest too many in case, as legend had it, we died of short breath. We picked cocoa, we carried buckets of them back home on shaky donkeys, wide banks and unsteady heads. We laid it out to dry in the sun in huge cocoa drawers, careful to save them from a torrent of rain. We danced headily, turning these prized globules with our feet. Cocoa too, could be associated with periods of one man rule in our islands. Who could forget Uncle Gairy on Grenada's cocoa plantations, speaking to the workers and consecrating himself their Saviour?

Cocoa is still prized in the islands, but our brand of Trinitario has been overtaken by the cocoa industries of Ghana. We are not able to compete on size nor on production range and we have been beaten on prices and plagued by disease. In the early 1970s most farmers switched to production of bananas as the cocoa crop was too unpredictable. The end result was that cocoa was only grown sporadically and exported in its raw form to more profitable centres for production. Now, due to the fact that it is estimated that cocoa will soon be worth its weight in gold (a true fact), there is a renewed effort by the region in its cocoa producing capabilities, and rightfully so.  The EU has funded the Caribbean Fine Flavoured Cocoa Forum with a view to capitalise on the flavoursome Caribbean bean as opposed to the ordinary, bulk, cocoa beans. The potential can be enormous. Professor Denise Thompson of the University of Trinidad and Tobago noted that we were exporting raw cocoa at $3 a kilo, which was being sold in the market at $1500 a kilo. It is my hope that this project takes off, for the benefit of our people and for the benefit of our islands.

Maybe in two years time, a young artist would place an exhibition in the Tate telling the history of our revitalised love affair with these seeds, representing the bounty of hard labour.