Thanks to the Ghana reportages on my earlier website, I received an assignment to photograph cocoa farmers in Sierra Leone the following year.

Thus, for the third time in a row, I travelled to Africa for two weeks.
My task was to document the journey of cocoa – from clearing suitable plots of land, through planting, harvesting and processing, to the final quality control.

In practice, this often proved to be quite difficult: most of the fruit had already been harvested, in some cases just one day before my arrival on site.
The roads to the villages, which were difficult to pass through anyway, made the journey a real adventure after heavy rainfall, and with temperatures above 30 degrees, the clearing area could only be reached on foot through hilly terrain and swamp. A temporary nationwide curfew in the second week was of little help as well.

The raw cocoa beans are purchased at specially established collection centres, then fermented and dried in the sun. Transport is usually carried out by motorbike riders.

Very few farmers in these villages rely solely on cocoa cultivation. Rice fields stretch across the landscape, banana trees line the paths, and palm oil is pressed everywhere and then refined in heavily steaming cauldrons.

I usually arrived in the villages quite shaken up from the journey and, with the help of the collection point staff, accompanied the farmers to their gardens, fields, or sometimes even to their family meals.
Just in time before dusk we returned to the regional capital Kenema, where the quality control of the stored cocoa beans ultimately took place.

Certainly my most challenging photography assignment to date, but also by far the most memorable.