Soppexcca and Espresso

This morning, October the 24th, I got up, packed my life into my super cool high-tech weight distributing backpack, and hiked around the streets of gorgeous Jinotega, Nicaragua, until I reached the cooperative office of Soppexcca.
A small wooden sign on the wall indicated the locations of the offices, the cupping lab (for coffee tasting and quality control procedures), and the newly opened gourmet coffee café (where high class mochas and cappuccinos come in glass goblets and cost only 60 cents, eat that, Starbucks). This café, opened just last month with the aspiration to foster appreciation and consumption of said beverages among native Jinoteganos.
In the under construction lobby, I was immediately greeted by a friendly mustached man who introduced himself as José Antonio, secretary of Soppexcca’s general assembly. With Doña Fatima (Soppexcca’s renowned general manager) currently out of the country doing Fair Trade promotions, one of the cooperative’s board of directors manages the office for a week’s time. This week, le tocó a José Antonio.
I was immediately ushered in, relieved of my heavy pack, and served a steaming cup of locally grown black coffee. After explaining to Toñio about my project and that I was here to learn about the organization, I was informed that right then, there was a meeting of the cooperative’s organized youth going on in the next room. Why didn’t I go and join them?
Slightly nervous, unsure of what to say to this group of 20 some youths, I sat down and introduces myself, told where I was from and what I was doing. From that instant, all burden on me was removed. Two young men instantly began to explain that they all came as representatives of the organized youths in their communities, that they were all children of producers, that today they were finishing a workshop and taking a quiz on quality control; for that reason they all had their noses buried deep in books. They went on to explain that they had been coming to the central office from their homes (anywhere from15 minutes to 4 hours away) once or twice a month for the last two years. They receive various workshops, and are expected to impart the information they receive back in their own communities.
As the younguns were ushered into their exam, José Antonio gave me a tour of Soppexcca’s three facilities, a small warehouse, the offices, and the lab. He recited a bit of the cooperative’s history, founded in 1997 with 64 producers and $850,000 in debt, after a previous cooperative, supposedly founded with the same goals, robbed its 2,000 members blind. Since that time, Soppexcca has been working to rebuild trust and relationships, and now represents 650 producers.
My tour ended in the lab/café. There, I met Wilmer, Marvin, and Javier, three of the coop’s four trained “cuppers” or coffee tasters (imagine certified wine tasters to get the idea). These children of producers, aged 19 to 22, work full time on quality control of coffee, cupping with buyers, and determining quality, flavors and characteristics of producers coffee. They share their knowledge with the producers in special workshops, training them to recognize how certain deficiencies affect taste, and to identify particular attributes of their own coffees, from citric, to chocolaty, to nutty or fruity. The descriptions could go on wine bottles: “Good acidity, with full body, fruity aromas complimented by a chocolate aftertaste”. Who knew?
After explaining this process, the boys and I entered the café, where I let slip my Opus experience. As newly trained baristas, the boys were thrilled at my experience, and put me to work discussing drinks, steaming milk, grinding espresso, and most importantly, making foam. Then, we practiced pouring drinks to end up with the multiple color layers that are the signature of really high class, impractical, but well-made espresso beverages. We practiced, drank, and laughed, spilling foam, making fun. I realized how much I miss working in a café! I miss you Opus and the Opusites! I felt full and happy, overjoyed to join these two parts of coffee culture, the realm in which I have some expertise, and the other that I am investigating. Full circle, and less than three months in….

Jinotega

I step onto the green school bus, and breath a sigh of relief at the sight of the many empty seats. I have just gotten off of the expreso from Managua, where the five seats across the bus had no relation to the actual number of people set to occupy them. One’s space is only as sacred as one can make it by broadening shoulders or glaring evilly, neither of which I am good at it. Soon, aisles begin to overflow with people and backpacks. There is certainly no 18 inch personal bubble in Nicaragua, and no 6 inch bubble on a Nicaraguan bus.
The current bus lurches into reverse, and then gasps into first gear, the worker hinging out the door, calling "Jinotega! Jinotega! Jinotega!" at the top of his lungs. A few more climb on board the moving vehicle, and we careen out of the station, onto cobbled streets that appear too small for such a large bus.
As we begin to climb the mountainous, twisty highway that joins Nicaragua’s two coffee capitals of Matagalpa and Jinotega, I am awed by the stark beauty of mountain beyond mountain, changing in color from golden green in the afternoon sun to blackberry jam purple and deep pacific blue closer to the horizon. The rugged forms of this naturaleza shape everything here, the country, the landscape, the economy, the people.
As the hour are a half long journey continues, the sun drops behind the mountain ridge, leaving us first in twilight followed by a blue mistiness, even though it is not yet 6 pm. The mist seems to pervade all the air, filling up the bus, steaming the windows, and invading my bones, chilling me for the first time since I arrived in Nicaragua. I pull the sleeves of my one long sleeved shirt down around my fingers and pull my knees up to my chest. I look out the window and sigh, preparing myself for another arrival, another city, and more exploration.

looking back and listing

Well, I am sitting at the Finca Magdalena, looking out over the wooden farmhouse railing, over the tops of the colorful garden, the outline and foundation of the soon to be artesanal sales building, treetops, and finally, the blue gray water of Lake Nicaragua. Sitting here at the computer, I try to think of all of the things that I have to do, to write, the ‘work’ that I am assigning myself; projects that will hopefully help me to understand, record, and synthesize this experience on all of the multiple levels, personal, global, academic, emotional. These include transcribing interviews, reflecting on the people and places that I have encountered, recording my thoughts about my findings in some semblance of a systematic way, and writing letters, notes, poems, to myself and other people who are dear to me, which also helps me to know where I am and what I am thinking about.
I am noticing recently that I am reverting back to my list making, something that I had avoided for the last couple of months, either because I felt I didn’t want to make lists, or I didn’t feel I knew well enough what I needed to do to know what to make lists of. Now I am left with lists of places to visit, of things to write, of letters to work on, emails to send, people to talk to. It is comforting, seeming like a connection to my former busy life (haha), and also giving me a greater sense of how my work on this project and myself within the context of this year is taking shape. Finally, almost three months in, I really feel like I am getting the hang of it. So with that, this brief, slight discussion, I resume my transcribing, my list making, and begin the work on my quarterly report to the Watson office, due in two weeks, and my first academic report in five months. Hard to believe that I am already almost three months along, learning, living, experiencing. That I am already able to look back at the same time that I look forward at this year. How will my view differ at the end, and from the next stages of the middle? I hope to be able to reveal at least a little of that in the reflections that I will be doing in these quarterly analyses.

Francisca y su cumpleaños

At 4:30 this afternoon, I sat happily, sipping a cup of locally grown (ie, right up the mountainside), organic coffee, with milk and sugar, a rare and spectacular treat in a country full of coffee, but where it is always black with lots of sugar. I had spent seven hours that day climbing, or sliding, or mountaineering, my way up the 4000 feet of the side of the Maderas Volcano. I was awaiting someone to come to fetch me for the birthday dinner date to which I was committed, but secretly part of me was hoping that that person wouldn’t come, so I could simply sit and sip my coffee rather than step out in the rain, to head to a house, where I would have to be social even though exhausted.
But a few minutes later, arriving more punctually than any other Nicaraguan I have met, appeared Denis, the 11 year old son of Francisca, whose birthday it was. Nicely dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, he arrived ready to walk us to his house, and was so cute and courteous that I was reminded of how wonderful it is to meet new people, bucked up my energy, put on my rain slicker and rubber boots, and was off for the evening’s festivities.
We arrived at the house, two wood-framed rooms, with no electricity. Those present were myself, Matt (who had accompanied me to harvest coffee and received the same invitation), Francisca, her four children, two grandchildren and a family of neighbors. Matt worked with the neighbor, Alberto, to string up a light bulb with a wire (which was fruitless since we later discovered there was no electricity) while I served refrescos and chatted about the government, the history or tourism on Ometepe, and was read short stories and jokes from a school book. I also had all of my hair braided by Yillian, Francisca’s youngest daughter.
After arriving at 4:45, Matt and I, exhausted had thought to stay until only 6:30. We realized that this was not a possibility when at 6:30, we had yet to sit down to eat! However, shortly thereafter we all gathered our plastic chairs around the table to enjoy our plate of rice, cooked chicken, and vegetables. It was wonderful. Francisca had clearly cooked all day to make for us this feast, and we all enjoyed it to the utmost, even without electricity. All the more charming by candlelight. We laughed, I translated for Matt, I felt right at home. We talked about tourists and tourism, age, children, the finca, slang, sayings, among other things. As the night was drawing to an end, Matt asked what the giant squash looking thing was in one corner of the room. “A papaya,” we were told, “que se la lleven”. And so, we were sent off with hugs, a flashlight, and a six-pound papaya, the largest I had ever seen! There was no refusing, our simple question turned into a gift, one of the many we had been given that evening, from a lovely dinner and great conversation, to entrance into the home and life of this humble family.
As Denis, Yillian and Francisca said goodbye to us at the roadside, having walked us there from the house, we were profusely invited back, whenever it was in the future that we were to return. As I said goodbye and walked up the hill, I reflected on the genuine nature of the invitation, and one day, hope to be able to take them up on it.

El Corte

The cutting. The harvest of coffee, in Spanish, is referred to as ‘cutting’, el corte. An odd word to describe the action, which consists of plucking the red coffee grapes off of the tree branches, pulling them down, snapping or knocking them off into one’s basket, depending on their ripeness. There is really no cutting involved. Despite that, the ‘corte’ has now begun, as has my experience with it. It should shape at least the next four months of my year, for the duration of the harvest season, I will hopefully become an ecpert, and semi-speedy, agricultural worker.
Friday morning, I had the opportunity to climb up the hillsides of Volcan Madera, one of Ometepe’s two active volcanoes, to the coffee fields of the cooperative that runs Finca Magdalena, the organic farm where I am staying. On the way, I walked with Don Cesar, a toothless, smily, slight man, to the beneficio húmedo, where the first step off of the coffee processing takes place. Walking through the open air structure that houses the depulping machines, we entered a brick room full of canvas sacks and baskets, where I was given a large, round wooden basket with a cord wrapped around it. I slid this cord over my head, bringing the basket to rest at my hips, balanced and ready to be filled with ripe, red, coffee beans when we got up the hill. I was also given a sack, large enough to hold about a hundreds pounds of coffee. I laughed, and said that I imagined I would be able to fill it maybe a tenth in the five hours of picking we were planning to do.
Hiking up the mountainside at 7 am, we were already behind. Since the harvest is just beginning, there were only twelve people already in the fields, but they had begun their work earlier, standing, ready to go, under the coffee trees and their shade canopy, by 6 am. I arrived, and joined the group of largely women by 7:30.
Yelling to each other, we all began to exchange names. I was referred to as “la turista”, the tourist, shown a turtle found among the plants, and instructed to pick only the red coffee beans, which meant climbing all over the hill, skipping some trees or sometimes entire rows of trees of green beans, looking for the few coffee grapes or cherries that would be indicated by the bright different color.
The basket at my waist, about two feet in diameter and a foot deep, began to fill very slowly, the beans accompanied by sticks and leaves, making me look like I had cut more, even though I hadn’t. I smiled and laughed when I came upon the other women, whose baskets where at least two times as full of my own, but who giggled and reassured that for my first day, the ‘miseria’ (misery) that I called my little pile, was not a miseria, but was greatly appreciated. Very good of them.
The work is hard, arms overhead, stepping over stinging nettles and trying not to slip down the steep hillsides, basket and all. The harvest day begins at 6 am and finishes between two and four, depending on one’s determination and tenacity. In that time, good cutters may harvest six to eight medias, they may fill their basket six to eight times. In the five hours that we harvested, I filled my basket two thirds full once! (I will also give myself the benefit of the doubt about the fact that not all of the trees are ripe, and I had to go looking for the beans, though others cut two medias in the same period as me). The culture of the harvest is interesting, as people are distanced, but shouting and laughing with each other, telling jokes, or singing, to pass the hours. The baskets, as they fill, put more and more pressure on one’s back, and become more and more awkward. When full, they are dumped out into the sacks, and placed at the end of a row of coffee trees to be picked up and lugged down the hill at the end of the day. It seems that it is never ending work, there are thousands of plants and hundreds of thousands of cherries, all needing to be ‘cut’, to be carried, to be processed, so that they can arrive straight to us, in the form of a drip coffee or a latte, thousands of miles from the women standing on the hillside, laughing and complaining, plucking them from the tree and carrying them down the hill, on burros or on backs. I love seeing the connection.

Ometepe

Ometepe is an island. It is located in the middle of Central America’s largest lake, Lake Nicaragua (the only place in the world, coincidentally, that is also home to the world’s only freshwater sharks). The island is home to two volcanoes, Maderas y Concepción, in addition to some 8,000 people.
Here on the island, I am staying at the Finca Magdalena, a charming old farmhouse which is run by a small cooperative. The farmhouse, which has individual rooms, hammocks, dorms, and an unassuming kitchen, overlooking a fabulous garden, the lake, and the volcano, is 120 years old. It was the property of the Somozas, the ruling family dictatorship that was in power some 40 years before the revolution (who also owned some 70% of the country’s natural resources by the late 70’s). Since that time, it has been redistributed to local farmers, and since 1983, has been run by the cooperative of the Finca
As I walked up the rocky mud path yesterday morning, I felt like I was entering a wonderland. My impression has not changed. Just after my arrival, I asked to meet and was introduced to Santos Rivera, the current president of the cooperative. He sat with me, and smiled, and told me of the history of the island, the farm, and the cooperative. He invited me to accompany him and others to harvest coffee this morning, scanning the bushes for the cherries that are beginning to mature, to change from hard green nubs, to soft, sweet, crimson grapes.
I am amazed by the felicity of the people that I have met here. It is like in every moment I can see promotional pictures. Not because they are not poor, or because their conditions are wonderful, but because the feeling that they exude is endearing, making one feel part of the community, as if you have always been here, even as they ask you questions about where you are from and what you are doing in Nicaragua. Don Cesar’s toothless smile, Felix’ firm handshake, Aljeri’s quiet conversation. I feel comfortable and interested, learning the names of all the people working and hanging out here at the farm, who live and call this place part of their daily lives. It feels homey and communal, providing work and leisure, with kids and old folks gathered in circles of plastic chairs, talking and laughing with each other, as the tourists laze around with their books or backgammon.
In the afternoon, I was invited, along with three other people staying at the Finca, to participate in the inauguration of the Presa, a small dam built this year be the cooperative, which will be used for both drip irrigation and a swimming hole for tourists. It is an unassuming swimming hole, in a leafy green shaded clearing, the perfect place to spend an afternoon in cold spring water, and then languish on the rocks. Even as outsiders, as tourists, we were encouraged, spoken to, enjoyed, teased slightly. Brought into this local celebration of a place that will be used by tourists, but which today, belonged only to the community, decorated with balloons, where food and guaro (a moonshine made from sugar cane) were passed around, loosening everyone up until the fun turned to people throwing each other into the water, enjoying and christening the pool. I feel blessed to have been allowed into this place, these lives, this celebration, and made to feel a part of it.
At the end of the fiesta, Francisca, whom I had just met picking coffee this morning, approached me, clearly not wanting to interrupt a conversation that I was having, but wanting to tell me something. I excused myself, and she informed me that tomorrow she “is of her birthday”, and is having a small get together. She would appreciate it if I, and Matt, who accompanied me harvesting coffee, would come to her house and join her and her family for dinner. She would like for us to share her birthday with her. I’m sure that I will have much more to write about that amazing experience tomorrow evening.
Acogedor is a word in Spanish that seems to have no translation. Loosely, it could be said to mean endearing, taking in, grabbing, taking up, among other things. It is the word that I feel best describes the Nicaraguans that I have met, and how they have reacted to me. Me han acogido, they have taken me up, taken me in, taken care of me. Each place, each family that I have visited, has made me feel at home. This place is no different, and I am so thankful for this opportunity, and for their treatment of me. Que acogedor, y que maravilla ser acogida asi.

Hostelling and the Cloudy Cloud Forest

The Bearded Monkey. Just the name suggests the kind of quirky atmosphere that one finds entering the dark hallway into a jungly courtyard surrounded by hammocks wooden tables, a small bar, and three rooms of dorm bunk beds. The courtyard is open to the cloudy sky above, which intermittently dumps rain on the shingled roof, creating a square waterfall in the center of this square communal space.
I am beginning a bit of sight seeing in Nicaragua, meeting my first fellow extranjeros viajeros, and wandering the streets of Granada, a Spanish colonial city founded in the beginning of the 16th century, just after Colombus reached Nicaragua in 1502. The buildings are the pastel blues, pinks and oranges characteristic of Latin America and the Caribbean, ringed with arches, open air courtyards, pillars, and gardens. The streets are narrow and not well paved, full of street vendors. All of the streets that run east to west end up on the east side at Lake Nicaragua, the largest fresh water lake in Central America (and home to the world’s only fresh water sharks, a fact of which Nicaraguans are fiercely proud). In the bay, one can see the hundreds of isletas for which Granada is also famous, literally an archipelago of hundreds of small islands supposedly created by an eruption of Volcan Mombacho, which looms just south of the city.
Volcan Mombacho was the object of yesterday’s excursion, a trip to one of Nicaragua’s most renown natural reserves, into one of her two cloud forests. And a cloudy forest it was! Boarding the bus with Martin, a Nicaraguan friend who lives here in Granada, Violeta, a German exchange student, and Emma, a Scottish traveler, we shared the ride to the park entrance with sacks of potatoes, chickens, and many Nicaraguans. Crammed in the back of the bus, my 18 inch North American comfort bubble was forced to shrink even further than normal in Latin America, to three of four inches, less when the lurching bus catapulted me into the body of the person standing in front of or behind me. Oh, what a ride.
Arriving at the park, we had to wait 45 minutes for the departure of the Eco-Movil, a gigantic Soviet Truck that is one of the few vehicles that could actually climb the tiled- 1000 meter highway, which heads basically straight up the side of the volcano (To the extreme that at times I thought we were not going to arrive, but rather slip back down the wet one lane road to our doom in coffee fields below). As we trekked up the mountainside in our trusty truck, we were pelted with a heavy rain, and gradually enclosed by a thick mist. For this, it is called a cloud forest.
Reaching the pinnacle of this 1500 meter volcano, we had a ten-minute orientation, and set off on the hiking trails, only to learn the true meaning of being in a cloud forest in the rainy season in Nicaragua. As we stepped up to the breathtaking and beautifully constructed lookout points, with signs describing that which we should see, from the city to the crater, to hot springs, we took a deep breath, and saw… white clouds! Laughing, we took photographs of the trees one could see for about a hundred feet, followed by the thick misty fog that blocked everything else from view. An impressive photo of me surrounded by damp fog will be my physical memento of this soggy, amusing trek.
While in some ways disappointing, this laughable and largely charming, though wet experience, reminds me in many ways of the fact that my time in Nicaragua is coming to an end, and of the number of things that are left which I would like to do. Three months is far too short to even begin to see all that a person would like to; for example, the view from Mombacho in the summer when the clouds and rain part or rise to reveal the views for which the park is famous. In the brief period that I have spent in this country, I have been impressed by so much, from the scenery, to the people, to the history. As I begin my travels during these last three weeks, exploring more of the country that I feel I am only beginning to know, I already find myself thinking of when and how I could return, feeling the anxious anticipation that comes from wanting to know and experience far more than one has time for. Pero así es la vida. Full of wonders too numerous to be imagined, and far too plentiful to be completely experienced. So, in the meantime, I will try to take advantage by walking the malecón overlooking the lake, talking to people in the post office, staying up til 4 am watching the motorcycle diaries, and reflecting as I am doing now…

Costa Rican Impressions

Well, I am currently sitting on a couch in the hostel Costa Rica Backpackers, and must admit that while lovely and comfortable, it feels like a completely foreign environment. I am surrounded by extranjeros, polish, American, Australian, Spanish. I just met someone from Seattly who knows some of the same people that I know in Ashland! Really small world.

After my nine hour bus trip, I am ready to go searching for some real food. Being tired of raisins, bananas and cookies. We’ll see what I can scrounge up.

From what I have seen so far, the rumors about Costa Rica feeling like a first world country seem to be true. Though I have not seen much, driving through San José showed a plethora of parks, shoe stores, American chain restaurants, well-designed buildings, and clean streets. The people I have talked to in the last few days keep referring to the Costa Rican Tourist Machine, and I can see why. Other interesting facts include that Costa Rica has world-class, free, and universal health care, the longest life expectancy rates in the world, lowest infant mortality, and indeed, absolutely no military. Imagine that. In fact, the US aid package to Costa Rica includes $30 million dollars a year for weapons purchases. This small country has put all of that money into a separate bank account, and made it available for the US to use whenever it wants, rather than begin to purchase artillery.

I look forward this week to exploring Costa Rica, and some of what I have heard about it from Nicaraguans. There are more than half a million Nicaraguans working and living in Costa Rica, both legally and illegally. Apparently, they work largely in ‘undesirable’ positions, doing housework or construction. They suffer a great deal of racism, and are seemingly thought of similarly to Mexicans in the states. However, my impression of Nicaraguans continues to be nothing but amazed at their openness and genuine concern for others. On the bus on the way down here, I sat next to Carrie, a native matagalpina who has lived the last 13 years in Costa Rica. She was returning from her first visit home in all that time. She was teary-eyed when she bordered the bus, so I struck up a conversation and offered her a cookie. In return, she chatted with me, offered my the opportunity to stay at her house, gave me a bracelet her neice had made her during her visit, told me all about where I needed to go and what I should do to take care of myself in San José, and gave me her phone numbers in case I need anything while I am here. She even offered to accompany me to the airport tomorrow if I wanted her to. That kind of openness and friendship offered to strangers is something that I have encountered countless times here, but which continues to surprise, impress, and touch me.

So with that, I head into a week of paying in colones rather than córdobas, to games of scrabble rather than dominoes, speaking in English, and feeling wonderfully wonderfully surrounded by my parents. However, I miss Nicaragua already, and cannot wait to head back…