Andrew Campbell has been intriguing many with his dark, velvety bars of chocolate produced under the business name Araunama and he is working around the clock to have a formal launch by mid-March.
Araunama is the Lokono/Awarak word for Essequibo. The business was named after Guyana’s largest county, where most of the cocoa beans are produced for the making of the chocolate. It is also the Campbell’s home county; he was born in Moruca.
No stranger to entrepreneurship, Campbell had started a venture called Ebesowana Natural Food some years ago, through which he sold dried fruits and powdered spices. Campbell was in Trinidad in 2017, working on the restoration of the Red House, Trinidad’s parliament. He had several Guyanese friends who knew persons in the chocolate-making business, and they introduced him to members of the Alliance of Rural Communities of Trinidad and Tobago including one of the founders, Gillian Goddard, who shared some of the chocolate products made there.
