Binario's Sunshine Story

Binario is a Production Manager for the Sunshine Nut Company located outside the capital city of Maputo in Mozambique. Mozambique is a beautiful southeastern African nation with a long coastline with many beaches on the Indian Ocean. It is also one of the poorest countries in the world with a large orphan population.

Binario is an adult orphan. He became an orphan as a child. His father was killed when he was young. For a while he and his brother were raised by his mother until she became ill. She had gone to the hospital and then was never seen again. This left her children's care with their grandparents. Binario's memories were that his grandparents beat him on a regular basis. It became so bad that he eventually ran away to be a Maputo street child. Unfortunately, one of the worse criminals became his mentor.

One day a woman invited Binario to live at a children's center orphanage. He was 14 years of age when he accepted the offer. There he lived until becoming a young adult. Then he was offered a job with the Sunshine Nut Company. He was just a basic worker doing all the physical labors that the job required.

After a year, he was noticed to be a very hard devoted worker with a lot of initiative. The owner of the company, Don Larson (from the USA, a former Director of Cocoa Operations at Hershey), called him aside to tell him what a great worker he was and that he was going to be promoted to a higher job with management responsibilities. At hearing this, Binario began to weep. Mr. Larson wondered why he reacted this way. Binario explained his life's story that because of becoming an orphan and being beaten by his grandparents, this was the first time he felt like he had any worth as a human being. He was just so astonished to be told he was such a good worker worthy of promotion.

Since then he has been promoted to even a higher management position. Having this job enables him to have a good life and able to support a wife and two children.

Mozambique used to be the leading grower of cashews in the world. Because of national turmoil for 30 years, the nation experienced great poverty and third world existence.
Mr. Larson is making an effort to bring the industry back.