Come Dine With Me- Kiendreogo Tinkouliga

In Abbot’s Hall Dining Room we have a fantasy dinner party, the guests at the table are all significant figures in food and farming and we reserve a guest spot at the dinner table where you can nominate someone to be featured. Our latest featured guest is Kiendreogo Tinkouliga, nominated by our Visitor Services Officer Darren.

What is the real price paid so we can enjoy the comforts of chocolate?

During lockdown, the staff took part in a weekly reading group on Zoom, where we covered several topics connected to food. The team was able to meet up weekly online and discuss what they’d read or watched and share their thoughts.

On one of those weeks, we watched ‘Bitter Chocolate’ part of the Rotten series on Netflix and heard the story of Kiendreogo, a story shared by countless other cocoa farmers. It’s not an easy story to hear, most of us love chocolate and confronting the price others are paying for us to enjoy it was eye-opening. In the cocoa industry, there are at least 30,000 adults and children who are victims of modern slavery in West Africa, so we wanted to do something to help to highlight this to our visitors.

Darren has put together some information and we turned it into a place setting at the table in Abbot’s Hall. We hope you’ll take the time to read this next time you visit and think about the changes that we can all make to make a difference to the lives of farmers such as Kiendreogo.

Today (Sunday 23 August) is International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and it’s Abolition and one of the companies featured in the documentary Tony Chocolonely, who are committed to 100% slave-free chocolate, have written about the significance of this day and provide further resources on how we can continue to educate ourselves read more