Entry: Samuel Orisajo, Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria

Samuel Orisajo is a Cocoa Borlaug Fellow from Nigeria. The Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellowship Program Global Cocoa Initiative is supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture/Foreign Agricultural Service in collaboration with the World Cocoa Foundation.

On March 17, 2010, I traveled by train to Philadelphia in the company of my mentor, Dr. David Chitwood of USDA/ARS, with the aim of on-site appreciation of the offloading of a ship with 292,000 bags of cocoa beans from Indonesia. On arrival, Mr. Harvey Weiner and Mr. Ari Weiner, the President and Director of Human Resources, respectively, of Dependable Distribution Services, Inc., (a member of the World Cocoa Foundation) briefed us thoroughly about the cocoa bean importing business in the United States. Then they led us on a tour of a large cocoa bean warehouse of 500,000 square feet. It was amazing; we had never seen such a large warehouse of cocoa beans before! Cocoa beans were sorted and cleaned before being re-bagged.

Cocoa Borlaug Fellow Samuel Orisajo and a shipment of imported cocoa beans in Philadelphia

We had the rare privilege of being on the ship and viewed the cocoa bags neatly arranged in the holds. The awesome experience was watching the offloading of the bags from the ship. A large crane lifted huge bundles of bags on pallets from the hold. Once the bags were on land, several fork lifts scurried throughout the warehouse, neatly arranging the bags in the warehouse. The trip will ever remain fresh in our memory.

A crane moves bundles of imported cocoa beans onto pallets from the hold

My appreciation goes to the USDA Cocoa Borlaug Fellows Program and the World Cocoa Foundation for sponsoring the trip, and also to Harvey and Ari Weiner for their facilitation.