Ivory Coast crisis: What they’re not reporting

For three months now, newly-elected Côte d'Ivoire President Ouattara has been struggling to take control of the country away from the desperate dictator-like ex-president Gbagbo who is defiantly ignoring election results, consolidating power and attempting to stay in control. Only now that President Ouattara has almost succeeding in ousting Gbagbo are we beginning to see any substantial coverage in the news. The United Nations confirmed the election results and they have 10,000 troops on the ground to try to minimize the toll of the conflict. The French also sent in soldiers. The European Union, the United States and much of the international community has accepted Ouattara and not Gbagbo as president. The fighting has been intense, but slowly most of the Côte d'Ivoire army has switched sides to supporting Ouattara. ALL THIS and only now is the situation getting some news coverage! I’m concerned that they are not reporting the full story. Côte d'Ivoire is the world’s #1 producer of cocoa—without Côte d'Ivoire’s cocoa we would not be able to enjoy chocolate as we do. What’s not being reported is the huge role that cocoa is playing in this civil war-like crisis. Take for example the first serious coverage I saw on CBC News on April 5, or this video from ABC News (turns out it’s Australia, not America!).

No mention of cocoa even though President Ouattara called for a cocoa embargo in order to deprive Gbagbo of the funds he needs to pay the military who are keeping him in power. You see, taxes on cocoa farmers, export taxes (from north to south) and corruption in government obtaining most of the profits from cocoa sales is how military conflict has been financed in Côte d'Ivoire for over a decade now. The EU and US have heed the call not purchase cocoa, a ban came into force in January 2011. Only last week did I hear any mention in mainstream news about this chocolate embargo and that was because Hershey’s announced their wholesale prices would be going up by 10%. It’s mostly just in the financial news that I have found any mention of this embargo, but even then they’re not reporting the whole story!

What no one is reporting is how the government has impoverished the cocoa farmers who do not make a fair wage for their labour. The horrendous result has been the widespread use of cocoa farmers’ children to work on the family farms. When they could not get by even then, cocoa farmers began to buy children and traffic child slaves from Burkino Faso and other desperately poor areas. 200,000 children work in the cocoa jungles of Côte d'Ivoire and about 15,000 of them are trafficked slaves. Children are used “to clear land for the planting of cocoa trees, and for weeding and harvesting crops. The boys and girls, many as young as seven, are unpaid or paid very little,” according to Asad Ismi writing for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor (Feb 2011). Citing a Channel Four documentary from England, Ismi says, “90% of the cocoa farms in Ivory Coast use child slave labourers, whose hellish working conditions include 20-hour work days, malnutrition, torture, sexual abuse, and exposure to toxic chemicals.” You don’t see this reported very much in the news, but it’s all been well-documented for at least a decade now, if not longer. [Here on this blog, see my first chocolate post "Giving up chocolate for Lent, maybe for life" by Ken Symes.]

As a Christian practising Lent, this year I gave up chocolate so that I could think and pray about this bitter truth about chocolate: children are being trafficked and enslaved to produce the cocoa needed to make the chocolate I love. So two days ago, when I saw that the National Association of Evangelicals published a press release calling for prayer for Ivory Coast, naturally I expected that they would include prayer for the 200,000 children labouring in the cocoa jungles.

“Evangelical missionaries have worked in Ivory Coast since the 1920s, planting churches and supporting schools, hospitals and other social ministries,” said NAE President Leith Anderson. “Our hearts go out to the people of Ivory Coast who desperately want peace, and especially to those who have lost loved ones in the recent fighting.” …
“Scripture calls us to pray for our leaders and all who are in authority,” Anderson said. “I am praying that President Gbagbo will step down gracefully for the good of his country and for the peace of the entire region of West Africa.”
The NAE also encourages its members to support humanitarian relief efforts to care for displaced refugees in the region.

These are good thoughts for prayer, but since we know that our Lord Jesus loves the little children of Côte d'Ivoire (Ghana, Burkino Faso and all of West Africa) and since we know that the Lord calls us to minister to the least of these, we must add to this prayer for Côte d'Ivoire. Please pray for changes in the chocolate companies and in the Côte d'Ivoire government so that they will do what is needed to end child slavery now and eliminate the worst forms of child labour now. Pray that people will come to know the bitter truth about chocolate and call on our governments stand up to the cocoa industry and legislate them to end the use of slavery and child labour. It’s not fair that children’s lives are being ruined in the Ivory Coast cocoa jungles so that our children can enjoy Kit Kats, Snickers and Smarties. [The following video is a snipit from Chocolate: The Bitter Truth.]

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One thousand paper cranes and prayers for Japan

Everyday you can be overwhelmed by carefully watching the continuing news coverage of the devastation of Japan. The scope of this tragedy continues to grow. The latest being the failure of the cement to seal the damaged area that is allowing radiation to contaminate the ocean. The problems continue to multiply. Nothing seems to go well in the efforts of recovery. What can we do? Certainly we can give financially, but shouldn’t this unfolding tragedy also call us to prayer? And how should we pray for the people of Japan?

I see no reason why Christians could not pray and fold paper cranes. This was an amazing show of support from the good people of PEI. I wish I could’ve gone to an event like this. Even still, I can pray. We can pray. When I look at the facts of this devastation of Japan, my recurring prayer response is, “Lord, have mercy…” And in reflection of all that has happened, I’ve also prayed along with a prayer spoken in Japanese in the video I’ve posted below. Please do share with us in the Comments how you have been responding to this crisis in prayer. It’s important for us to pray, to pray together, and I’m hoping we might also learn from each other how we might better pray.

The Japan crisis by the numbers

• Mar 11/11 A magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck 125 km off the shore of Japan
• At least 50 aftershocks followed, some with a magnitude as high as 6.0
• A powerful tsunami was triggered, coming ashore at 800 km/hr (speed of a jetliner)
• The tsunami wave was 10 m high (equivalent to a three-storey home)
• The earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, knocking out power to its cooling systems which spread fear of a nuclear meltdown
• Volcano Mt. Shinmoedake erupted on Mar 13, leading to the evacuation of a 1 mile radius as roasting hot ash rained down from the mountain
• 1.4 million homes are without water
• 1.9 million homes have no electricity
• 450,000 people are displaced
• So far 12,000 deaths are confirmed and 15,000 people are are still missing

Lord, have mercy.

Ken Symes Conclusion
Please do comment: How should we then pray for Japan?

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How should we respond to the bitter truth about chocolate?

Most people will never watch this documentary Chocolate: The Bitter Truth. Perhaps I’m being too cynical, but I suspect most people would rather not know the truth about how their Mars bars, Kit Kats and Hershey’s kisses are produced. Chocolate is a multi-billion dollar global industry, and I’m sure they would rather not having the public knowing about the extreme poverty of West African farmers, the child labourers and the children trafficked into slavery. A decade after these chocolate companies signed a pledge to eradicate child labour, little has been done to implement it. Chocolate: The Bitter Truth highlights the continuing abuse children suffer in the production of chocolate, despite repeated promises of reform. This investigative documentary shows that the chocolate industry still supports child labour through its supply chain, that child labour is still rife in the fields and that the industry has made few moves to eradicate it or the child trafficking behind it. Now that’s truth that most people don’t want to hear. But isn’t it the kind of bitter truth to which we must respond? Isn’t this the kind of extreme injustice that should call us to action? To me the nagging question has been “How can you enjoy this chocolate bar knowing how it was produced?”

Thanks to those already participating in the discussion. (For Part 1 of the discussion and video, see Giving up chocolate for Lent, maybe for life by Ken Symes.) I invite anyone else to join the discussion by commenting below as together we aim to draft a Christian Response to the bitter truth about chocolate. Let’s continue giving our reactions to the truth we’re seeing in the documentary plus sharing other knowledge we have about the chocolate industry. And let’s begin to identify those verses of Scripture which speak to this kind of bitter truth. Before watching this video, I recommend that you grab a Kit Kat chocolate bar and then unwrap it as Paul Kenyon unwraps one at 50 seconds into this video. Eat it as you watch the children in the video eat the same Kit Kat bar. It was a big wakeup call for me.

Chocolate: The Bitter Truth is a BBC: Panorama documentary with Paul Kenyon. It was rebroadcast on CBC: The Passionate Eye with the insertion of a little Canadian insight.

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Susan Boyle gave up chocolate for Lent

I’m personally giving up chocolate.
Apart from it being too fattening,
I think the money raised will be quite phenomenal!
—Susan Boyle

It’s great to see Susan Boyle doing well and doing something good with her fame. I still go back every now and then to see Susan’s try-out almost two years ago on Britain’s Got Talent when she took the entire audience including Simon Cowell by surprise with her amazing voice singing “I Dreamed a Dream.” She had some ups and downs with the sudden fame the show brought her, but she seems to be doing well now. It’s great to see here doing something like promoting a good charity like SCiAF and personally participating in the fundraising by giving up chocolate for Lent. Hopefully the money raised will be quite phenomenal!

I too have given up chocolate for Lent. I do so because it’s been nearly a year now since I discovered the bitter truth about chocolate and children. Côte d'Ivoire is the world’s largest producer of cocoa beans, supplying over 40% of the world’s chocolate. You can be sure the next time you eat a Kit Kat, Hershey’s Almond or Mars bar that some of that chocolatey taste is coming from Côte d'Ivoire. 200,000 children work in Côte d'Ivoire’s production of cocoa, and 12,000 of those children are victims of human trafficking and slavery (“Children in cocoa production”). And the problem of child labour is by no means limited to just one producing country. I want to think about this reality, research it some more, discuss it on this blog, pray about and try to discern what our Christian response should be to such a horrible victimization of children. Lent is a season for getting serious about our discipleship. I want to see if we as Christians have a responsibility to change how the world produces chocolate.

Check out my intro article on this challenging subject:
Giving up chocolate for Lent, maybe for life
by Ken Symes 
“It’s not exactly uncommon for Christians to give up chocolate for Lent. One friend told me the benefit was how awesome the chocolate tasted on Easter Sunday after the 40-day ‘fast.’ Christians give up chocolate (TV or Facebook) in order to create a space for spiritual growth. So I guess if you gave up Twitter for Lent, instead of tweeting your friends, you would “tweet” God and grow through the discipline of prayer. So why give up chocolate for Lent?”

 

I also previously blogged about Susan Boyle’s surprising spectacular first appearance on Britain’s Got Talent:
God chose what is regarded as nothing by Ken Symes
“How quick we are to judge other people! First impressions are made sometimes with lightning fast precision. That's what the audience and judges of Britain's Got Talent did to this middle-aged Scottish woman whose appearance was, well, a bit off. Were they ever surprised! You will be too!”

 

 

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Giving up chocolate for Lent, maybe for life

I love chocolate. I think it’s important for you to know that before I get to the giving it up for Lent part. I’ve always loved chocolate. As a young child, I can remember the treat of getting one chocolate bar for the week. I can remember rationing out the squares of my Jersey Milk bar so that I would have two or three squares everyday to get me through to the following Friday when Mom would buy the next weekly chocolate. I remember the thrill of graduating to two chocolate bars per week! And much more recently, under the stress of work and life, I’ve experienced the indulgence of a daily chocolate bar!

I recently discovered the delightful taste of Wunderbar! And the Peanut Butter version of Oh Henry! is quite yummy. And the Mars Caramel bar (pictured here) is out of this world! Believe me, I love chocolate!

Now, its not exactly uncommon for Christians to give up chocolate for Lent. One friend told me the benefit was how awesome the chocolate tasted on Easter Sunday after the 40-day “fast.” In theory, Christians give up chocolate (or TV or Facebook) in order to create a space for spiritual growth. So I guess if you gave up Twitter for Lent, instead of tweeting your friends, you would “tweet” God and grow spiritually through the discipline of prayer. So why give up chocolate for Lent? Instead of being a temporary deletion that challenges me, a good Lenten discipline should be a spiritual exercise which may permanently change me. Thus, I am not giving up chocolate for Lent in order to practice self-denial (though this will be true) nor to create a space for prayer, but instead I suspect that a time of contemplation about chocolate and spirituality might actually change me permanently. We shall see.

Last Easter I watched a documentary that shocked me. It’s undeniably true that children are involved in the harvesting of cocoa in a widespread way in west Africa. And it’s not just child labour, but also forced slave labour. Children are taken from Burkino Faso and forced to work under gruelling conditions in the cocoa jungle of Ivory Coast.  This has been well-documented for over a decade now and yet most of us buy our Mars Caramel bars, Oh Henry!s and Wunderbars without the real truth ever entering our minds: “This chocolate bar has been produced with the use of forced child labour.” If those chocolate bars were labelled this truthfully, who would buy them? So during this season of Lent, I am giving up chocolate in order to consider a Christian response to this bitter truth about chocolate. Where is the redemptive movement of God in the chocolate industry? And what is our responsibility as Christians spearheading redemption in this world?

To prepare this kind of Christian response to such a significant social injustice, I need your help. A theological response to a problem like this is best developed in community rather than in solitude. There is a method for doing something like this and I’m going to follow it roughly as you’ll se in log posts every Wednesday through the season of Lent. The method goes like this:

1. Define the issue. Research the facts. Get to the truth.
2. Collect and consider Scripture which is relevant to the issue.
3. Review existing theology or doctrines which come to bear on the issue.
4. Bring this all together and draft a Christian response.
5. Submit the draft to discussion and debate, then finalize it.

Would you join me in this process? Whether or not you give up chocolate for Lent is your choice, but join our group in hammering out a Christian response to the chocolate industry and you will be changed, if nothing else, you’ll be able to think Christianly about chocolate. How can we get started? You need to watch this outstanding documentary from the BBC called Chocolate: The Bitter Truth. I can’t imagine that anyone could watch this and not be affected. Use the Comment section below to tell us whether you already knew this bitter truth about chocolate. What’s your reaction to seeing this first part of the documentary? If you did know some of this already, tell us what you know and how you discovered it. I’m inviting us to use the Comments to work on Step #1 of the method I proposed above. Feel free to dive into Step #2 as well. While you can certainly view the entire documentary now (click through to youtube), next Wednesday, I will be posting the next part of the video, as well as summarizing our discussion and moving us forward in the above method. (There will likely be some posts between now and then to draw more facts about chocolate to our attention.) Ready to find out the truth? Watch this!

Chocolate: The Bitter Truth is a BBC: Panorama documentary with Paul Kenyon. It was rebroadcast on CBC: The Passionate Eye with the insertion of a little Canadian insight.

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Rethinking Groundhog Day, four weeks later

Over the weekend, I heard how the groundhog was right and spring had come early! That was on our warm sunny Friday afternoon. On Friday evening, I was at McDonalds and saw the teens who had proclaimed the coming of spring most boldly freezing their tails off for lack of winter clothing. This morning as I walked my kids to school it was –14 with windchill making it feeling like –21. We’ve now had four more weeks of winter (minus one Friday afternoon) since Wiarton Willy, Shubenacadie Sam and Punxsutawney Phil did not see their shadows on Groundhog Day and thus proclaimed an early spring. (To find out what happened when New Brunswick’s new prognosticating groundhog could not be roused from his sleep, see Ken Symes’ Newsvine column – its too funny!) Isn’t it odd that Christians have so often faced the charged of being “unscientific,” when, in truth, much of our cultural belief and practice is unscientific, including relying on a groundhog with a 39% accuracy rating to tell us when spring will come?!?

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Wayne Gretzky celebrates 50th birthday, we celebrate him

Yesterday, January 26, Wayne Gretzky turned 50. Can you believe it’s been almost 12 years since we’ve seen him play!? So what did “The Great One” have to say about turning the big 5-0? "I thought 40 was old when we were kids," Wayne Gretzky told ESPN.com last week with a chuckle. "It just seems like yesterday I was turning pro at 17 and on my way in my car to Indianapolis," Gretzky said. "You kind of wonder where all the time goes and how quickly it does go by and how valuable life really is. It seems like you get to 50 a lot quicker than you think you're going to get there."

Sports Illustrated claims that Gretzky’s “career may be the greatest body of work in sports history, and his record for career points will last several lifetimes.” The Great One is generally regarded as the best player in the history of the NHL. Upon his retirement on April 18, 1999, he held forty regular-season records, fifteen playoff records, and six All-Star records. He is the only NHL player to total over 200 points in one season—a feat he accomplished four times. In addition, he tallied over 100 points in 16 WHA/NHL seasons, 14 of them consecutive. Gretzky's jersey number, 99, has been retired by all teams in the NHL. (“Wayne Gretzky,” Wikipedia)

One of the standards in greatness in hockey, a record set by the Rocket Richard in 1944-1945, was to score 50 goals in 50 games. Gretzky shattered that record on December 30, 1981 when he scored his 50th goal that season in only 39 games! Thus, on Gretzky’s birthday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “It’s fitting that Wayne is turning 50 but only looks 39.” Cute, eh?

Given his incredible (but past) accomplishments as a professional hockey player, it makes me wonder what Gretzky’s outlook is today. Does he look back and yearn for those good ole days? Wouldn’t it feel great to pull on that No. 99 jersey one more time? I don’t have nearly the accomplishments of Gretzky, but I do find myself looking back and missing some of the best years of my life. I’m going through a rough patch these days and sometimes it’s hard to stop yearning for the past. Sometimes I puzzle over whether the future will ever be better than my past. The Old Testament prophets actually speak to a group of people who have trouble living in the present because of their fond memories of a better past. During the second building of the Temple, God spoke to his people who kept remembering the good ole days and were convinced the future could not be as great. Through the prophet Haggai, God said:

‘Who of you is left who saw this house [i.e. the Temple] in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing? But now be strong, Zerubbabel,’ declares the LORD. ‘Be strong, Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land,’ declares the LORD, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the LORD Almighty. ‘This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear.’ (Haggai 2:3-5)

They were so occupied remembering the good ole days that they could not see what God was already doing in the present. And so his Spirit is at work in us today, producing fruit, developing character and preparing us for something better. With God, the best is always yet to come! That’s the message of the prophet Haggai: the past is history, the best is yet to come! For us today, we know that in Jesus Christ, God is building his kingdom here on earth and nothing will prevail against it. “For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose,” says the Apostle Paul (Philippians 2:13). Like the apostle, we can be confident that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6). So even when today doesn’t look so good, when I’m uncertain of the future, even when the past seems better, when I’m in a rough spot as I put it, even when we suffer, we can know that “all things work together for good to those who love God, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). With assurances like these, how can we conclude anything but this hopeful truth: the best is yet to come!

Just before Jimmy Carter turned 70, he was interviewed by Barbara Walters. She asked a question that we might think we could answer easily on Carter’s behalf, “Mr. President, you have had a number of exciting and challenging careers. What have been your best years?” Easy, right? Surely he would say those four years he served as President of the United States of America. Or, maybe, since his presidency was challenging, maybe he would say those years in the navy when he was the commanding officer of a nuclear submarine. Perhaps, being nostalgic, he might say those years he served as Governor of Georgia. Want to know how Jimmy Carter answered? “What have been your best years?” In his own words: “After a few moments, I responded with absolute certainty: ‘Now is the best time of all.’”

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