Tetteh Quarshie GaDangme nyobi from osu
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| Tetteh Quarshie introduction of cocoa crops to Gold Coast |
Tetteh Quarshie swallowed cocoa beans and pooped it out when he came to Ghana’, sounds familiar?
I’m pretty sure it is what the majority of school pupils heard about the now-famous cocoa farmer whose legacy has exceeded him.
What story have you heard about how cocoa came to Ghana? Not the Dutch or Basel Missionaries version, but the version about Osu- born and bred, Tetteh Quarshie.
A visit to
the farm by GhanaWeb’s Wonder Hagan revealed the true history behind how the
uneducated blacksmith brought cocoa back home from Fernando Po.
A blacksmith’s toolbox, that’s what six cocoa pods were hidden in and shipped back into the then Gold Coast Considering he was on a missionary journey in Fernando Po, he was required to pass through the checkpoint, like every individual returning to their various countries, to be checked for any foreign items.
At this
point, it was a decision; to get exposed or to strategically hide some six
cocoa pods he had taken from Fernando Po (now Equatorial Guinea). Now he played
his cards well, knowing the toolbox would be the last place anyone would want
to dig into, he took his tools, put the cocoa pods way down in there and
covered it with his very own made tools.
With that,
the entire plan was cooked and it worked out perfectly. Over six weeks on the
ship, he journeyed back to Gold Coast with the pods. Even here, he went back
home and tried planting the first seed in Accra. That failed though, with the
soil type, mostly sandy and clayey.
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| first cocoa tree in Ghana |
Then his
missionary work came in, he found good soil in Mampong Akuapem, where his Basel
missionary works continued. There, he was given some acres of land by the then
Mampong Chief, where he planted his very first seed and that’s where cocoa
cultivation started in Gold Coast, now Ghana.
Today, the
farm is still in good shape and is producing bags of cocoa for the country.
Thomas Awuku, who has been working on the farm for years told the team, “That’s
the history we also learnt about him, but when I got to this stage, I realised
they were telling us a lot of lies about Tetteh Quarshie. Tetteh Quarshie
didn’t swallow cocoa beans before he brought them to Ghana because in the 1870s
travelling was difficult. There were no aeroplanes for travelling so we travel
by sea, either by ship or canoe. Tetteh Quarshie went with the ship, and it
took him six weeks from Ghana to Fernando Po which is currently known as
Equatorial Guinea.
Assuming
he swallowed the cocoa beans and for six weeks on the ship, are they trying to
tell us that the whole six weeks on the sea, he couldn’t visit the washroom?
And if he did, it means everything went back straight into the sea so we never
got back the beans and returned to Ghana.” He said.
“So Tetteh
Quarshie didn’t swallow cocoa beans, he rather came back with cocoa pods, the
ripe ones, six of them, hid it in his toolbox. He was a blacksmith and a
blacksmith has got a lot of metals so there was a toolbox where all the metals
were being kept.
After he
got it from the owner, he removed the tools and hid the cocoa in the toolbox
and afte arranged his tools on it and covered it. Before you are allowed to
enter the ship, they ask you where your luggage is so they can look through it
to know the things you are having in there.
After
opening his, they only found the working tools. The cocoa was hidden under the
tools, so they couldn’t think further there was something under the tools, and
that was how cocoa ended up in Ghana.
Tetteh
Quarshie’s exploits over the last century have earned Ghana some plaudits on
the international front as the second-best producing cocoa in West Africa
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