LOS NARANJOS (dpa) – For nearly 25 years now the women of the Dominican Republic town of Los Naranjos have been running in their own small cocoa factory.
“We are certainly not hostile to men,” chuckles Sofia Paredes. The 50-year-old is one of the founders of “Club de Amas de Casa La Esperanza” – “Housewives’ Club Hope”.
There is scarcely any time for some gossip over a coffee.
“Our husbands are hard at work on the plantations and harvest the fruit of the Arbol de Cacao (cocoa tree),” Senora Paredes said. But here in the high plateau region, a good two hours’ drive from the capital Santo Domingo, incomes are especially sparse.
“We women must earn some pocket money and bring in a little bit of extra income so that our families and children can get along better,” she adds.
The women’s self-help group in Los Naranjos has 31 working members. The village has about 320 inhabitants. There is a small school, chickens and pigs, a few horses, three shops, “and a delivery van and three cows”, the women say.
At the end of last year, the women had to grind up the cocoa beans in laborious effort with a hand-operated mill. The women earn more money with the blackish-brown oval clumps of mashed cocoa than they would selling the unprocessed beans.
In the city, a 125-gram “bola” or ball of ground cocoa used for a chocolate drink, costs five pesos (38 U.S. cents).
On a recent Sunday, men and children also gathered at the cocoa house, and the mood turned celebratory when the dark sticky mass of ground up beans oozed from the new donated machine.
The initial tests showed that the women can now produce 250 bolas of cocoa in one or two hours – as opposed to a number of days it took with hand labour.
Advisor Qualberto Acebey, 43, meanwhile is helping cocoa farmers to adopt ecological growing methods, and assisting the women in calculating their costs.
“Now they need more gas and electricity,” he said, referring to the cost side of the new equipment.
And what do the women intend to do with the profits of their labour?
“Slowly, slowly,” Eusebia Frias says to such a question. “First we want to be absolutely safe and build up some reserves, for example for repair work. Then we want to construct a larger building.”
The old building is little more than a large-sized hut and does not provide the best shelter in inclement weather.
“After that, the surpluses will be paid in equal measure to the women in our club,” club president Frias says. As to her reward: “I have been elected to an honourary presidency. I don’t get one peso extra.”
