Chepstow to Cameroon - Emotional Jam
Posted by Angharad Underwood on
On the 1st February we had the pleasure of joining a dynamic entrepreneurial team from Wales to launch a sustainable food project in the Menoua Region of Cameroon:
Team Jam - Carol Adams, founding Director of Taste Cameroon, Food Adventure and Slow Food Southeast Wales and myself - Angharad Underwood, founder of The Preservation Society.
Team Butchery - Pam Thompson from Charcutier Ltd and Mark Adams from AWS and Slow Food Cymru Wales.
Team Smallholders –Maurice Price from Glamorgan Smallholders.
Team Construction & Rugby - Mark Underwood of CJS Electrical, Chepstow RFC and Newport Dragons.
And we made jam - who knew that jam making could be so emotional!!!
The region of Dschang is highly fertile, producing exquisite organic fruit & veg with a very short shelf life. As it is an ex colony, the skills of preserving fruit & veg have never been developed so teaching jam was an absolute revelation.
Our plan was to teach 10 ladies a day and when 45 arrived we were a little bit overwhelmed! Our beautiful ladies ranged from wives of Kings, Head Teachers, local entrepreneurs, market traders and a lady running a disabled project was going back to teach her 60 children.
One of our highlights was on day 4 when a lady brought her jam, she had pimped it up with herbs and spices which was in itself emotional, it transpired that she was a healing lady and all of the herbs would calm a child's stomach and prevent worms - Food for Healing / Healing Food x
We are so looking forward to returning to beautiful Cameroon, and to bringing these skills back to Wales - we all buy food and waste it, we need to relearn preserving skills too - #lesswaste #lovefood.
Look out for our Cameroon inspired jars, coming soon x