Charles Kong Soo

Mul­ti­fac­eted Don­na Ly­dia Mo­ra, CEO of the Lopinot Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (LTA) and man­ag­er of the Lopinot Choco­late Com­pa­ny, is a tour guide, choco­lati­er, wood-burn­ing artist, jew­eller and bas­ket weaver, among oth­er things. Her fa­ther, Mar­tin Gomez, is a liv­ing parang trea­sure in Lopinot, and they share their pas­sion for their com­mu­ni­ty.

She brings a wealth of knowl­edge to her tours and vis­i­tors thor­ough­ly en­joy them­selves in the im­mer­sive and ex­cit­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Guests learn how Lopinot got its name from Charles Joseph Compte de Lop­pinot, a French lieu­tenant gen­er­al, vis­it his­tor­i­cal sites, and do what has be­come known as her ex­treme­ly pop­u­lar “co­coa tours.”

Mo­ra is al­so an avid ghost hunter, hap­py to share sto­ries of para­nor­mal ex­pe­ri­ences in the vil­lage, and she ap­peared on the Amer­i­can pro­gramme Ghost Hunter In­ter­na­tion­al as well as oth­er tele­vi­sion shows.

In an in­ter­view at her D’Abadie home, she said, “LTA was cre­at­ed be­cause there was a need, Lopinot re­ceives hun­dreds of thou­sands of vis­i­tors each year, and I felt that even though they had got­ten the cul­tur­al and tourism as­pects of the tours from my dad, they didn’t get an ex­pe­ri­ence.”

As the al­lure of Lopinot grew, Mo­ra and her team de­vel­oped five well-planned tours that cap­ti­vate tourists from lo­cal, re­gion­al, and around the world. “They are the his­to­ry tours that take you on a jour­ney back in time to the Count de Lopinot’s time in Louisiana, USA, his life in Haiti, and his es­cape to Trinidad and the plan­ta­tion that was built by the hands of the en­slaved, the folk­lore, the vis­it to the tomb, the riv­er, co­coa es­tate, the choco­late tours, the danc­ing de co­coa, and to ex­pe­ri­ence the Mar­tin Gomez fruit bat cave that was cre­at­ed in 2014,” Mo­ra said.

At the Lopinot Choco­late Com­pa­ny, they cre­ate 65 per cent and 70 per cent dark choco­lates. Their choco­late prod­ucts have reached world­wide through tourism; a group took a dozen of the com­pa­ny’s co­coa balls to a shrine in Japan.

Mo­ra, who is al­so the chair of the La Fi­es­ta De Lopinot fes­ti­val and PRO of the Lopinot La Pas­to­ra Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil, said they had cre­at­ed a mi­ni mar­ket where lo­cals could sell their prod­ucts, which con­sist­ed of co­coa balls, co­coa pow­der, co­coa but­ter, co­coa soaps, cof­fee, cof­fee soaps, wines, jew­ellery and wood burn­ing.

Par­tic­i­pants learnt these skills, she said, and most of these cours­es were fa­cil­i­tat­ed ei­ther by the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Ex­port Cen­tres Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EC­CL) or YTEPP.

Mo­ra, who has two years of train­ing with the EU and the Crop­per Foun­da­tion on civ­il so­ci­eties and gov­er­nance, re­called fond­ly a vis­it from a del­e­ga­tion from the King­dom of the Nether­lands last year. She asked Am­bas­sador Cor­nelis Hers­bach if he would like them to make choco­late for the em­bassy, and they were com­mis­sioned to make choco­late for the King­dom of the Nether­lands King’s Day on April 2023.

Mo­ra said that was the biggest ho­n­our for Lopinot and their com­pa­ny, as it was a roy­al king­dom and they were still in bliss. The king­dom was giv­ing back to rur­al com­mu­ni­ties like Lopinot, she said. They al­so re­ceived a let­ter of grat­i­tude from the King­dom of the Nether­lands. Hers­bach al­so en­cour­aged her to write her own book.

An en­ter­pris­ing woman, Mo­ra re­cent­ly fin­ished a two-year busi­ness pro­gramme with the NED­CO Busi­ness Ac­cel­er­a­tion pro­gramme, which changed their busi­ness prac­tices.

She was ex­treme­ly proud that no oth­er choco­lati­er or choco­late com­pa­ny had ac­com­plished this feat in Trinidad.

Mo­ra said Chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Josi­ah Austin asked her to cre­ate one of their co­coa bas­kets for his guest, the Am­bas­sador of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na Fang Qiu, who vis­it­ed him. The am­bas­sador was treat­ed to a true Lopinot tour ex­pe­ri­ence and an in­dige­nous meal with roucou chick­en and pastelles, which he thor­ough­ly en­joyed.

Soon af­ter, Mo­ra re­ceived a call from the em­bassy that Am­bas­sador Fang Qiu in­sist­ed that all diplo­mats must come to ex­pe­ri­ence their tours, and they were giv­en a tour of a life­time.

She said stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na, Ari­zona women’s bas­ket­ball team, Mi­a­mi, Illi­nois, New York, and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Lopinot ex­pe­ri­ence.

Mo­ra said tourism was the first in­dus­try to close in the world due to COVID-19. When the coun­try was closed in 2020, it was chal­leng­ing for her; she had a staff and no mon­ey was com­ing in. They quick­ly adapt­ed and were one of the first that did dig­i­tal tours. Mo­ra said it did not make news, but they did it suc­cess­ful­ly.

As PRO for the new coun­cil, one of their new ini­tia­tives is work­ing with the EU to bring so­lar en­er­gy to Lopinot. Their mot­to is “a safe place where in­ter­na­tion­al tourists are treat­ed like lo­cals and lo­cals are treat­ed like in­ter­na­tion­al tourists.”

Mo­ra loves meet­ing peo­ple from all over the world, but most im­por­tant­ly, for all the school­child­ren and teach­ers that come on field trips, the ab­solute joy they show and love by ex­pe­ri­enc­ing their tours was over­whelm­ing.

Tours were cre­at­ed with chil­dren in mind to help as­sim­i­late and ed­u­cate them on the his­to­ry of slave plan­ta­tion life, the tra­di­tions, the cul­ture, and Trini­tario co­coa. Mo­ra shared a bit of triv­ia that the first set of in­den­tured labour­ers that came from the Fa­tel Raza­ck ship were sent to one of the first five es­tates in Lopinot, the La Re­con­nais­sance Es­tate.

She is an ad­vo­cate for the en­vi­ron­ment and many oth­er caus­es, one of them be­ing to­geth­er with the Cross Rhodes Free­dom Project founder Shaba­ka Kam­bon. Shaba­ka Kam­bon and the Lopinot Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil ad­vo­cat­ed for the re­moval of a sign at the his­tor­i­cal site, a for­mer slave plan­ta­tion, that refers to hun­dreds of en­slaved Africans brought to this coun­try in the 1700s as “loy­al slaves.”

Mo­ra is al­so in­volved in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices and works with the youths in her com­mu­ni­ty. She, along with res­i­dents, worked with Pro­tec­tors of the En­vi­ron­ment and helped plant trees.

Mo­ra al­so worked with Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and this brought skill pro­grammes that were geared to­wards tourism and mak­ing an in­come out of it for mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty. This has helped to cre­ate a sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty.

Her ad­vice for young peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly women who would like to be en­tre­pre­neurs, is to go for it. An in­ter­est­ing as­pect of their com­pa­ny was that young peo­ple could sell their items at their mi­ni-mar­ket to make ex­tra mon­ey. Mo­ra said one young en­tre­pre­neur has her own pep­per sauce and co­coa punch de crème, while oth­ers sell cakes, jew­ellery, key chains and even chows.

“We en­cour­age them to do so, and hope­ful­ly, more will cre­ate their brand,” she said. “Nev­er give up. I start­ed late, you can do it. Just try and try again.”