Palm Oil and Small Chop

Palm oil is the quintessence of West Africa – it is complex, an acquired taste and reckoned to be rather unhealthy. Small chop is the addition of ingredients that make it palatable for European taste. From the unique perspective of working aboard merchant ships trading to the area, the author provides a viewpoint of the first 25 years of West African independence – it is simultaneously the story of the final years of many of the British Merchant Navy’s liner trades where fortunes largely de...