Spices from around the world

A smell of incense and spices wafted through the air at St James Cavalier, Valletta, yesterday, drawing people to the third annual Fair Trade festival, Taste the World.

Called "Spice Up Your Life", the festival was organised by the non-profit Fair Trade Co-operative to create an awareness on the global movement of fair trade.

"Our aim is to sensitise the public towards fair trade. This year we picked on spices. Many small producers of spices across the world are being exploited by multi-national companies," co-operative president Nathalie Grima said.

Today over a million small-scale producers and workers are organised in as many as 3,000 grassroots organisations and their umbrella structures in over 50 countries in the south.

Their products are sold in thousands of fair trade and supermarkets, among others.

The movement is engaged in debates with political decision-makers in European institutions and international fora. Fair Trade has also made mainstream business more aware of its social and environmental responsibility.

Many people, young and old yesterday thronged through the stalls of Fair Trade foodstuffs, handicrafts, clothes, costume jewellery, CDs of world music, and a host of other ethnic products from communities in Africa, Asia and Latin and Central America.

This year the co-operative invited Italian fair trade expert Valeria Calamaro, who has just published a book on recipes with fair-traded spices, to give two seminars on spices and the way they were traded.

"Spices are small, but moving big things. Fair Trade helps countries, such as Sri Lanka, to be strong enough to face other markets and make business fair," Ms Calamaro said.

A wide selection of spices was available to the public together with recipes from a variety of cultures.

An ethnic music concert yesterday evening featured the sitar and didgeridoo music of Andrew Christie and Wailin Grech from Malta, as well as the Congolese, Nigerian and Maltese musicians, singers and dancers of Kilimanjaro, who spiced up the evening.

Kilimanjaro played Afro-Cuban music, Afro-Raga, Soukous, Rumba, Zouk, and Salsa.