The Cocoa Inspector

The cocoa trees were dying and Mr. Owusu-Ansah was taking it personally. He had been the regional cocoa inspector for twenty-eight years. He had inspected more cocoa trees than most people had seen trees of any kind. He could identify black pod disease at thirty paces and swollen shoot virus from the way a leaf curled. He had a notebook — currently his fourteenth — in which he recorded the health of every farm in the Ashanti Region, and he carried it in the breast pocket of his shirt, where other men might carry a photograph of their wife or a packet of mints. His wife, Grace, had opinions about the notebook. "When you die," she said once, over breakfast, "I am going to bury you with that notebook instead of a bible, because it is the thing you consult most." This was in 2019. She had been making this joke, or what he hoped was a joke, for approximately fifteen years. He laughed the first time. He had since developed a smile that acknowledged the joke without encouraging repetition, a facial expression he considered one of his finest achievements. The problem this season was not disease but rain. Too much, too early. The pods were splitting on the branch, the beans fermenting before they could be harvested. Kwadwo, whose farm Mr. Owusu-Ansah had inspected since Kwadwo was a young man and was now a man whose children had children, stood at the edge of his plot and shook his head. "It didn't rain like this before," Kwadwo said. "It did," Mr. Owusu-Ansah said. "In 2007." "Not like this." "In 2007 it rained for six weeks without stopping. I have it written down." He patted the notebook. "November third to December fifteenth. You lost forty percent of your yield." Kwadwo looked at him. "You remember the percentage?" "I wrote it down." "Of course you did." They walked through the farm. Mr. Owusu-Ansah inspected. This was not a casual thing. He touched branches. He broke open pods and examined the pulp. He crouched, despite his knees, and looked at the soil around the roots. He wrote in the notebook. Kwadwo followed and did not interrupt, because he had learned, over many years, that interrupting Mr. Owusu-Ansah during an inspection was like interrupting a surgeon during an operation. Technically you could. Practically, you should not. The report, when it came, was delivered standing between the trees, in the shade, with the formality of a man who believed that information deserved to be properly dressed. "Sixty percent of your pods are compromised. The western section is worst. The drainage ditch needs clearing. Your shade canopy is too dense in the southeast corner." He looked up from the notebook. "Your trees are healthy. The problem is water." "So what do I do?" "Clear the drainage. Thin the canopy in the southeast. Harvest what you can now, before it gets worse." He closed the notebook. "And pray for dry weather, if you believe in that sort of thing." "You don't?" "I believe in drainage ditches." Kwadwo laughed. Mr. Owusu-Ansah permitted himself a smile. He drove to three more farms that day. His car was a white Toyota that had been white fifteen years ago and was now a colour that existed only on government vehicles in the Ashanti Region — a sort of red-brown that was equal parts paint, laterite dust, and resignation. The air conditioning had broken in 2016. He had reported this. He had received a reply saying the matter was under review. The matter was still under review. At the last farm, a young woman he hadn't met before was managing the plot. Her grandfather had died. She was maybe twenty-five and looked at the trees with the concentrated uncertainty of someone who has inherited a problem and is trying to decide if it is also a gift. "I don't know what I'm doing," she said. "Nobody does at first." "Did you?" He considered this honestly. "No. I learned from inspecting other people's mistakes. Which is a comfortable way to learn, because the mistakes are not yours." He opened the notebook. "Your grandfather kept good trees. The soil is right. You have an advantage." "What advantage?" "You care enough to say you don't know." He started walking into the plot. "Now. Let me show you what to look for." He stayed an extra hour. He showed her how to check for black pod, how to read the colour of a leaf, how to tell a healthy root system from a struggling one. She wrote things down on her phone, which he found slightly offensive and entirely practical. Driving home, the sun going down behind the trees, the laterite roads turning gold in the last light, he opened the notebook on the passenger seat and added a line to the day's entry: "Ama Serwaa, new manager, Nkawie plot 7. Grandfather's farm. Attentive. Will follow up." Grace was on the porch when he got home. She had made groundnut soup. He could smell it from the car. "How were the trees?" she asked. "Wet." "And the farmers?" "Also wet." She handed him a bowl. He ate on the porch, the notebook on the table beside him, the last light fading over a landscape that was green and red and complicated, and that he had spent twenty-eight years trying to understand, one tree at a time.