Dispatch 8: Making Contact

The other day I asked Roopchand and Candi for details about how this project got off the ground. It's an interesting story.

Last year Roopchand and Sheri traveled to the States seeking help for Christian, their oldest son, who needed (and still needs) surgery for a serious heart condition. In New York, they attended a breakfast sponsored by Diana Fillhart's ministry to the homeless there. Subsequently, during the months they spent up north, the family was adopted by Diana's sponsoring church, Coudersport Alliance. When their visas expired and they had to return to Trinidad, members of the church committed to build them a house.

Coudersport Alliance happens to be Candi's church, and Diana Fillhart a friend of Candi's mom. One day, Candi remembers, Diana came to her house. She had been to Trinidad, and was full of talk about cocoa farming. "I think I was asleep on the couch," Candi says. But she was awake enough to hear the word cocoa. "I had been working in Mark's lab for a year and a half at that point. I thought we should be able to do something for Roopchand."

Guiltinan, who studies cocoa in a place that cannot grow the stuff, is always looking for field partners to help test the results of his work in lab and greenhouse. He is also interested in helping farmers grow cocoa by providing them with better plants. For a lab that specializes in developing efficient techniques for propagation, building a propagation facility — a greenhouse — was a natural idea.

At about the same time, Nick, a life sciences major, had joined the lab. He had worked on Habitat for Humanity projects, and his dad runs a greenhouse business in New Jersey. Nick was a prime candidate, in other words, for getting involved.

"Mark told us that if we planned it, it would happen," Candi says. So she and Nick, with considerable help from Carter, started pretty much from scratch, first contacting Roopchand, and asking him what kind of facility he thought he needed.

"I was green," Roopchand says, but he visited greenhouses, talked to farmers and agricultural agents, and drew a plan. On their end, Candi and Nick worked on organizing supplies and equipment, logistics., and fund-raising.

Between January and June, Roopchand and Candi communicated continually by phone and email to set things up, and the fruit of it all is this trip, the first in what Guiltinan hopes will be an ongoing series. Through the Office of International Programs at Penn State, Candi and Nick — neither of whom had ever been farther abroad than Canada before — are earning course credit for the experience.

Roopchand, for his part, is eager to get his cocoa farm up and thriving, and to start keeping data on his plants that will help Guiltinan's research. "If this is not done," Roopchand says, "the assistance would all be one way."