Dear Somafamily,

Firstly, thank you for your contributions to our relief fund for our friends in Flores. Between the 5% of sales we set aside, and donations from 48 generous Somis, we collected a total of $2404, which we have split three ways between local NGOs Wahana Visi and Human Initiative, and affected farmers who work with us through IKAT Cacao.

We wrote last week that we wanted to contribute to the earthquake relief because we felt we had been accepted into the Flores family. Flores, in fact, felt like one big family to us. Our host Septhania took us all around the south side of the island, and when from time to time we met a stranger, Septhania would take them aside, chat to them rapidly in one of several languages, until all of a sudden her face lit up, and she announced to us happily that this man or woman was in fact her second-cousin, four times removed, on her mother’s side!

Septhania and Michael live with two dogs and a monkey they found abandoned on one of their cacao farms. The monkey, called Yuki, took a strong romantic liking to Alistair, while Septhania’s cousin Ima, who kept house for her and Michael, took a strong maternal liking to Rose. On our last day we were all invited (even Yuki) to Ima and her husband Francis’ home, where Ima’s mother and sisters cooked for us, her children, nephews, and nieces played with us, and Francis and his brothers slaughtered a pig (which was a great honour for us, but certainly not our request!) Then we all sat, a table of forty, to eat together beneath the mango trees.

During the meal, Alistair put his arm around Rose, and said that this was a very special day. We heard a wild howl of fury, and Yuki leaped across the table, stood like a woman wronged on Alistair’s lap, and with soap opera intensity slapped Rose across her face. All forty of us laughed, and it felt so much like Christmas lunch with our family.

We often say that Soma Cacao grows in paradise. It is a great joy for us to visit these paradises to meet the people who live there. We always feel that we are accepted into the families we visit.

When we went to Karkar Island, our boat was met at the shore by a dozen young men in war paint shouting and brandishing spears. We were told later that it was the local youth group giving us a traditional welcome, but it did not feel particularly welcoming at the time. At some point our host Caroline told us to introduce ourselves, and immediately Rose sprung to her feet, and started describing Soma Cacao.

We stayed in Caroline’s guesthouse (intrepid Somis can find her website here), but we were rarely alone. Local children came by after school to play, men and women ate with us and sang for us each night; always one of Caroline’s cousins from another village was wandering by to say hello. Papua New Guinea is Australia’s closest neighbour, but we have never felt further from home. We disappeared into a different world, where everything felt extremely vivid, and when we came home it all felt like a dream.

We source our Mexican cacao from an area on the border with Guatemala called Soconusco (incidentally, Emperor Moctezuma sourced his cacao from the same place). We have visited Farmer Josué María Pascuales Muñoz and his family twice, and I don’t think anyone else visited in between. It is not even close to the tourist trail.

When we went for lunch in the local town, we felt like The Beatles. Alistair was very blonde at the time from being in the Mexican sea, and drew a lot of attention, but it was Rose who proved most popular. Rose has very blue eyes, and blue eyes were big theme in Mexican music in the 80s. We stopped to eat tacos at a small restaurant, and you could tell from the owner’s haircut, moustache, dress sense, and general demeanour that he had cut quite a figure in 1987. He practically carried Rose to a table, and would happily have laid himself out on the floor for her to walk over his back if she had permitted him. Nothing was beyond his gallantry. Rose barely lifted a utensil the whole time she was in his restaurant. Meanwhile, word spread like fire through the kitchen, and every course we were served (many more than we had ordered) was delivered by a different cousin or nephew. Neighbours wafted in to sit with us, we watched a football game, the proprietor left us briefly in order to comb his hair before asking for a photo with Rose. We left very full of food, and full in another way that gives energy but contains no calories.

Farmer John Goodman’s farm on the edge of the Daintree is not as exotic as the other farms we have visited, being only three hours’ drive from Soma HQ in Mission Beach. Having said that, the Daintree rainforest is a paradise of ancient trees and secret waterholes, and Far North Queensland does feel like a different world to Sydney or Melbourne (our local member at Soma is actually Bob Katter. He often drives through town for a pie, and recently appeared as the Mirror on the Wall in the local production of Snow White and the Seven Farmers).

Of all the people we work with, John feels most like family. We try to call once a month (always on a Sunday) to chat about cacao and the weather (rainy, always rainy!) He and his wife Mel recently visited us at our new place down the coast.

We hope to visit the farms we source from in Peru and Ecuador (maybe together) and the Solomon Islands soon. As we speak with potential new cacao origins, one of our first questions is “Can you host us for a visit?” We are convinced that cacao carries the feeling of the place it grew in. If you have a cup of peppy Peruvian Soma, you know that it’s not the same as a sleepy Solomon Islands brew. We’re sure that if you pay very close attention, you can hear the songs of Karkar Island in a cup of Karkar Island cacao, smell clove trees and vanilla flowers in a cup from Flores Island, taste the big-hearted magic of Mexico in a cup of our Mexican cacao, and feel the ancient richness of the Daintree Rainforest in a mug of Daintree Soma.

If we do our job right, you will know a little about these places even without visiting them, just as we told the people who live there a little bit about you.

That’s the Soma Family, with branches all around the world.

With vanilla, salt, and honey,
Alistair, Rose, Bob Katter, and the team at Soma Cacao