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.

The raw cocoa beans are purchased at specially established collection centres, then fermented using traditional methods 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.