Bean to Bar

This was the awesome title of a certain MK's science project.  Growing up in Bundibugyo, our kids were fascinated with chocolate.  When we moved there in 1993, the primary cash crop was coffee.  Sweet honey-suckle fragrance from the white blossoms would welcome us back from trips as we wound down into the jungly valley.  But by the end of the decade a coffee-blight had wilted trees, and rebels had interrupted commercial patterns.  People switched in masse from coffee to cocoa, and soon Bundibugyo became a huge exporter of cocoa beans.  We even had cocoa trees in our yard.  So one year Luke decided to try and figure out how to turn those lumpy yellow fruits into something resembling a sweet treat.  With his expert friends, he harvested, fermented (by burying in the soil), and dried the beans.  We roasted, ground (in an improvised coffee grinder), and mixed with sugar.  And there was a chocolate-smelling, coarse granular product that at least reminded one of chocolate.  Many times we dreamed of a chocolate factory, decrying the value loss as local small-scale farmers sold their beans to distant buyers.  John Clark took Luke's attempts a step further and produced a smoother paste with a better taste.  But we never quite had the technical or business expertise to pull off a commercial product. Meanwhile hunger increased in Bundibugyo as people stopped growing adequate family food to convert all their land to the potentially lucrative cocoa; the major cocoa buyers flew into our airstrip to inspect and negotiate; cocoa was stolen at night, traded by day, kids missed school whenever the trees came into harvest season, etc.  And life went on and as a mission, other than trying to use the Christ School farms to earn money with cocoa, we never progressed in our Willie Wonka dreams.

So imagine our surprise last night when Bethany whipped out the following chocolate bars from her trip to South Africa:

Yes, this is the same title as the science project of old.  Yes, this is Ugandan-origin chocolate.  But better by far is the fact when you turn it over and read the fine print, this chocolate actually COMES FROM BUNDIBUGYO.  And it tastes GOOD.  Really really good, smooth and rich and vibrant and amazing.  It is produced by a small-scale origin-specific family-owned business in the Cape called De Villiers Chocolate.  If you lived in South Africa, you could actually buy them on line here or here.

Who would have guessed that in all the heat and humidity and malarious fog of Bundibugyo, the mudslides and gunfire, the superstitions and isolation, something could incubate that tastes like this?

Pure grace, the extraction of sweet from the bitterness of life, the purification that produces joy.

Two teams of Bundibugyo kids are at the national football tournament this week.  Others are in medical school, or getting married, or teaching primary school kids.  The New Testament in Lubwisi will be published within the year.  We have far to go in pushing back injustice and death, but this chocolate bar reminds me of the emerging beauty in a place that has known too much pain.