Out of Africa
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- January
- 15
U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, D-Bronx, returned to his district a few days ago after spending nearly a week in West Africa visiting tribes that make a living harvesting cocoa beans.
Engel was in Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana and Morocco as part of an initiatve he has worked on for the last several years to get children out of the fields and into classrooms.
On July 1, per an agreement signed seven years ago with major players in the U.S. chocolate industries, 50 percent of the cocoa-growing region must have surveys in place that detail the work of children.
The issue isn’t just one of exploitation, Engel said today, but of tradition.
“We went to the most remote areas of the region,” he said, describing one village in Cote D’Ivoire that had no running water or electricity.
As animals such as goats and pigs roamed freely, the villagers tried to tie clothes on Engel and the others so they looked like them.
“They know that we are trying to help them,” he said.
Engel traveled with Sens. Tom Harkin (Iowa) and Bernie Sanders (Vermont.)
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 6:25 pm by Sarah Netter.
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What, exactly, were the clothes that the villagers were trying to tie on Engel and the others to make them look like pigs and goats?