Fulfillment through Filling

I sat down on my knees in front of a pile of dirt. Light on the top, the dark moistness was revealed as sections of the two foot tower sunk into themselves as earth was moved underneath it. One, two, three, I swipe a small, black plastic bag over the surface of the mound, opening it up by filling it with soil that soon will nourish baby coffee plants.
I am seated in the backyard of Wilma, a 50 year old ex-guerilla warrior who has lived here at Santa Anita since it’s founding in 1998. She shares the four-room, concrete block house she has here with her partner Roberto, and her two children, Maria and Luis, aged 15 and 11, as well as with two geese, numerous chickens, and a small cat. We periodically offer the chickens small insects we find going through the pile of dirt in front of us.
The project for this week in this household is the filling of 3,000 small plastic bags with earth, arranging them in neat lines in an area fenced with corrugated tin and pieces of plastic. In each row, the small bags are stood up, ready for the addition of the coffee bean that in a couple of months will sprout as a new tree, which in another three years will produce more coffee beans. So far, working for three days about five hours a day, we have filled approximately 1,400 of these little containers.
This seedling project is part of Santa Anita’s strategy to increase production, basically by covering any open space on the farm with more coffee plants. Currently, they produce high quality organic coffee, but the amount of production is so small that it makes it difficult to make ends meet. Particularly with all they have to pay in export taxes, certifications, and then basic necessities.
Sitting on my knees however, and filling these bolsitas, is about the best thing that I could be doing right now. I feel happy and fulfilled, plunging my hands into the soft, dark brown fluff we have just strained through a grid. That process reminds me of sifting flour, creating dirt of a similar texture. We all sit quietly around this pile, watching as it shrinks minute after minute, and our lines of bags get larger and larger. Occasionally we talk about George Bush, whether it will rain, Roberto and Wilma’s exile in Mexico, the primary and secondary school teachers recently hired by the community, the relative prices of automobiles in America and Guatemala.
There is something peaceful, solitary, in this work. Knowing that this is the project for the time being, that when one is tired, they can rest, that it will get done. That I am helping to do it. It gives me time to think about my own connection to stress, to always doing things in a hurry. I realize that being here now, concentrating on the task at hand, without worrying about the future, is part of the lesson that I am learning right now. I am working on being fulfilled by doing just what I am doing, being content. On filling up myself as I fill up these hundreds of tiny little black bags…