Andrew Campbell has been captivating much with his dark, velvety bars of chocolate produced under the business name Araunama and is working round the clock for a formal launch by mid-March.
Araunama is the Lokono / Awarak word for Essequibo. The business is named after Guyana’s largest county, where most of the cocoa beans are made for making the chocolate. He is also in Campbell’s hometown; he was born in Moruca.
A stranger to entrepreneurship, Campbell had started an enterprise called Ebesowana Natural Food some years ago, where he sold dried fruits and powdered spices. Campbell was in Trinidad in 2017, working on restoring the Red House, Trinidad’s parliament. He had several Guyanese friends who knew people in the chocolate making business, and they introduced him to members of the Trinidad and Tobago Rural Communities Alliance including one of the founders, Gillian Goddard, who shared some of the chocolate and made there.