Time consuming
Finding nuts, preparing the nuts and making traditional handcrafted shea butter is time consuming. To get 1 bag of good nuts:
- It takes a woman 6 hours to collect 1 bag of fruit, including two times a half-hour walk to the collecting place and back to the village).
- You need 3 bags of fruit for 1 bag of nuts. This means the collection time for one bag of dried nuts is 18 hours.
- After the fruits are collected, it takes 3 hours to depulp the fruits and cook the nuts to clean them.
- After the cooking, the nuts have to dry in the sun for 3 days. It takes 1 hour to spread all the nuts.
- After drying, the nuts are beaten and cracked to re [1] move the shell. It takes 1 hour to crack the nuts.
- After cracking, it takes 2 hours to separate the nuts and shells and to select the nuts.
- After selecting the nuts, they have to dry again for 4 days. Every day it takes 1 hour to save the nuts from humid in the night or rain. When the nuts are dry, you can store the nuts in the bags.
It takes about 3 days of work, spread over several days, to get 1 bag of good nuts.