Fair trade

I can't remember when I first tried rooibos tea (redbush), but I've become rather partial to it. The plant is unusually it grows in southern Africa and attempts to grow it else where but with similar climates have mostly failed, as it needs very specific conditions and soil microorganisms to flourish.

This one has a slight caramel flavour, happens to be organic certified, but more importantly it is Fairtrade. I know that Fairtrade isn't perfect, but I don't like the idea that I may buy something and some people in the supply chain take all the profit and others go without. I don't object to people making a profit, what I object to is the unfair distribution of that profit.

For example most non Fairtrade chocolate is produced in Africa, and there is an awful lot of child slavery involved. Gangs steal children at gun point from villages in one place and them move them across an administrative border (e.g. country) where they are forced to work unpaid in the chocolate plantations, and the giant western companies buy the cocoa but wash their hands of the illegal activity that produced it.

Tonight I went to the local FabLab at the college at the bottom of the street. It was basically a Linux User Group meeting. People bring computers with problems (hardware or software) and others try to help them to fix them. I spent quite a few hours trying to get a modern high speed VPN to work, I have it working on my system at home but it wasn't working for my colleague, in the end we concluded that the VPN was working fine, it was the firewall on the remote system that wasn't playing ball, which was the problem. They put up with my dire French and demonstrated their very good English. At least I now have some tame locals to start to practice some French with!

Back blipped, but I'm catching up and blipping more continuously too!