Zanzibar

Blue waters crash against white shores. In the nearby sea, wooden fishing boats float alongside each other, the color of rust from clinging to their bodies after their long lives at sea. Beyond them, yachts and freighters pull their weight away from east Africa and into the wide Indian Ocean. Along the shore, dozens of children toss their black bodies off of an ancient stone pier into the waves, bobbing happily amidst the water and their peers. Sitting on the shore, tourists watch from Thai restaurants, sipping beer and cocktails in white and mahogany safari chairs.
As the sun dips below the horizon both locals and tourists head through the winding alley like streets, hugging buildings in order to squeeze between careening cars coming in both directions down a road built before cars threatened to forcefully expand them. Everyone it seems is headed to the same place: the market.
Approaching through the darkened park, through trees and gazebos and dirt and litter, silhouettes are backlit against anchor lights in the open harbor. There are hundreds of people of all colors milling about, some in khaki shorts and T-shirts, others in traditional Maasai dress, their red robes draped gracefully around their lanky bodies.
There are no stalls in this market place. Instead, one end consists of blankets covered in various wares, from beaded bracelets, anklets, and necklaces, to carved rhinos and elephants, traditional masks, serving spoons, and batik paintings. “Looking is free, my friend,” sounds out in English and Swahili. Tourists and touts introduce themselves, putting a friendly edge on the ensuing interactions. Each haggles for their idea of a better price, the tourist wanting less and the salesmen more.
The stalls gradually shift from goods to food. Directly on the harbor, each table is identically heaped with similar morsels. There are kebabs of all sorts, full prawns skewered and grilled, pieces of lobster, crayfish, calamari, and fresh fish. Chicken, beef, or various other kinds of meat kebabs are passed from person to person. Fried bananas, breadfruit and naan round out these animal offerings, placed on the stand next to lobster and crab claws as large as a human hand. Zanzibari pizzas fry on round skillets, their light bread becoming golden as the egg, onion, and meat filling solidifies into warm, mouth-melting goodness. The air smells of fish and smoke and charcoal. Only hot coals of open grilling fires illuminate the crowds; the ambience is mysterious and scurrying as money and food are exchanged. Tummies are filled; the daily bread is both made and consumed.
In 1964, the two independent countries of Tanganyika and Zanzibar created Africa’s only functioning merger of separate nations. They became Tanzania. Despite 41 years of joint nationhood, this island 40 miles off the coast of Tanzania has maintained its own distinct and celebrated culture. Here Arab, Indian and African cultures mix today as they have for two millennia, highlighting the history of Bantu people, Persian traders, Omani sultans, missionaries and locals who have lived out there days amidst the pristine beaches. Carved doors and key-holed windows reflect the Arab influences, while Swahili is spoken over never-ending games of boo and moncala, traditional African board games. The island feels less like one imagines Africa, and more like some exotic time-warp to a place that is so varied it seems unidentifiable. Yet here it is. May further explorations continue to reveal the islands many facets over curlicues of octopus leg and machete sales, never disappointing in providing the fantastic and unanticipated.

Impressions

The wind bristles by. Across from this four story roof terrace, I look over the tops of buildings, lowering my gaze to watch the leafy branches of trees swaying in the breeze. The three trees in front of me are three different colors of green in addition to portraying three different textures of leaves, three different heights, and three different patterns of growth. However, in this early evening wind, they move together circularly, up and down according to the direction and strength of each gust.
Looking out past them and under them, I see paved streets and tin roof tops, gray, green, rust. There is a giant black satellite dish filtering the rest of the world into someone across the streets’ living room. Some of the roofs are flat, others tilted, but most shield square concrete buildings with grated and netted windows from both the scorching equatorial sun and the powerful seasonal rains. Along this street, a back road in Moshi, one of Tanzania’s tourism capitols, life progresses.
The backdrop to this dusty town where paved roads become dirt and dirt roads possess rocks enough to appear paved is Africa’s highest peak. According to her mood, locals inform you, she may or may not peek out from behind her misty shroud to show her snow topped face almost 6000 meters up in the sky. Whether or not Kili decides to reveal herself, the natural world around her is striking enough. As the sun goes down, the mountains to my right appear softly pink, their tone accenting the painted traces of clouds that appear in the otherwise intensely blue sky. To the left, from whence the sun has already retreated, the mountain ridges are a deep purple skimmed by bluish tufts of cloud. These layers reach the sky the way that ocean waves overtake the shore, naturally bringing together two completely different substances.
Below, people walk in the middle of the street I have yet to see used by a car, though there are many parked along its sides. Old pick up trucks, minivans, buses. Four wheel drive vehicles in the habitats they were designed for. White taxis of varied epochs solicit tourists or languish in repose on the roadside. It is less of a challenge to locals than to me to stroll the street in the correct way. I turn left and step out only to discover that the cars in my lane are coming from the right. A vestige of British colonialism. To this, I hope that I can adapt quickly.
The streets of this city advertise safari tours and household goods, banks, curio souvenir shops, and clothes. Men and women sit at ancient manual sewing machines on the street corner ready to create, darn or alter garments. As I pass they hail me with “Habari”. Nzuri, I respond, utilizing five percent of my twenty-word vocabulary. For my effort I am rewarded with a brilliant, white-toothed smile in a dark, bright-eyed face. I continue walking past stenciled signs revealing what is available along every block.
After seven days of experience in ‘darkest Africa’, I am shocked at how familiar everything seems. It appears that there is something about Africa, something so carnal, so native, so powerful, that it is difficult to misinterpret. Trees appear as I have seen them in the countless images I have encountered, the plains and deserts and baobab trees are just as I expected. I am confused by being in a place that is at once alien and somehow known. It is as if places and images already present in my subconscious have come to life. They therefore do not shock me, but how did they get there? Where did they come from? Are any of them mine? How will these preconceived notions affect what I do and do not notice here? What I do and do not judge? I suppose that only time will tell…

Cupping

Acidic. Heavy. Nutty. Balanced. Flowery. Chocolatey. Piquant. Sweet. Moldy. Stale. Salty. Citrusy. Inarticulate. Articulate. Pronounced. Complex. Sharp. Mellow. Earthy. Tangy. Appley.
These words appear on various colored backgrounds in a taster’s wheel, placed according to specificity. The tasters wheel, developed over many years, is supposed to aid in the identification of fragrances, aromas, flavors, characteristics. It is intricate, complicated, layered. It is a guide; a guide for the description of the limitless attributes of coffee.
Of course the descriptions are not limited to the hundreds of words on this wheel. Indeed, one is encouraged to describe what they smell, sense, inhale, perceive as creatively as possible. “It is heavy bodied with notes of bakers chocolate on the tongue, and a pleasant, rounded acidity that coats the palate for en extended period after swallowing”. “The hint of lemon is complimented by whispers of blueberry, creating an articulate flavor with medium body and low acidity”. Wine anyone? No, this is coffee we are describing.
Coffee is also described at various stages. A visual evaluation precedes everything. After grinding, one evaluates the coffees “aroma”, the smell before water is added. Then, water at precisely 200 degrees should be added
In addition to the description of the attributes of coffee one must be able to identify its origin. Nations, and within nations, regions, and within regions, farms, have particular features they may be renowned for. A good cupper can easily identify a Kenyan or a Sumatran, a Malawi or a Zambia, a Brazilian or a Peruvian. They will be able to explain the attributes of each and even the seeds of these variances, what causes the particular distinguishable traits. In addition, they could tell you if the beans brewed in the cup were too ripe or not ripe enough, stored next to spices or in bags made with petroleum, whether the coffee was grown at altitude or close to sea level. Talk about well-trained palates.
In order to cultivate this skill and vocabulary, those interested in cupping are advised to do a few things. Smell, A LOT. Go to the supermarket and smell everything, committing the various scents to memory so that one will be better able to identify them in a cup. Don’t eat spicy foods, and don’t eat before you plan to taste. Practice. Sip a lot of coffee. Connect your taste buds to your memory receptors. Practice some more.
The most amusing part of the cupping experience is the actual method of tasting. There is no gulping coffee at a cupping, in fact, one does not even drink it! Rather, one must use a rounded deep soup spoon to scoop up a small amount of coffee, raise it to their lips, and slurp it into their mouth as fast as possible, ensuring the liquid coats their mouth all over, reaching the back of the throat and thereby giving one the full experience. One’s cupping ability and training can usually be ascertained by the power and sound of their slurping. Contrary to what your mother told you about table manners, forcefully aspirating the coffee out of your soup spoon so that it coats the entire inside of your mouth is the modus operendi of cupping sessions all over the world.
As I train little by little, attempting to hone in myself some semblance of expertise at this skill, I become aware of its importance for farmers. Understanding how to distinguish their coffee from others, pointing out both its good parts and its defects makes it possible for them to make improvements in quality as well as to demand prices they know are fair for the quality they produce. Access to this knowledge is their key, and here on realizes more than ever, that knowledge is power. Power to see, to distinguish, to make demands accordingly.
The only thing about cupping, besides all of the ritual, stipulations, etc, is that it may actually decrease one’s ability to enjoy coffee. As anything, learning more about something can put one into the snob category by increasing the ability to understand what is really high quality and what isn’t. As I delve deeper into this, I get to know more and more purists, more and more about appreciating coffee for its natural flavors. This means drinking it black. Luckily, as I have come to see, good black coffee is really good. Sweet, flavorful, intense, delicious. However, I am going to have to work out just how to compromise the part of me that is training to be a purist and that part of me that loves iced coffee and lattes. I suppose like movie versions of books, one has to take each for what it is, taste its qualities, and not judge one by the standards of the other.

Cairo Bustles

Cairo Bustles. It bustles with people, with energy, with rusty black and white taxi cabs that carry spare wheels on the roof. It bustles with electronic, neon lights and Coca-Cola signs, cell phone advertisements displayed hundreds of feet in the air on top of buildings whose architecture better matches London or Paris than what one imagines in Egypt. The streets fill and throng with veiled women, wearing anything from a full burkha to a decorative scarf. They are passed on the sidewalk by businessman dressed in suits, who walk along oblivious to the street vendors hawking anything from Kleenex to slippers to decorative scarves and jeans. Camera toting tourists snap photos of the Nile, the pyramids, scarved women and taamia, the word in Egypt for falafel. They timidly speak, but after a few days are not surprised to be greeted back in English. Even so, those brave of heart continue to assert themselves, guidebooks in hand, throwing in shukran and salam alekum to their new found friends. The city is alive with city sounds, horns honking, people’s voices, businesses going about their business. All the while exuding mystery, power, and history as people focus on making their way from today to tomorrow.
Signs fluctuate between Arabic and English, some written in both, the English looking clear to me and progressing logically from left to right. The Arabic, beautiful, flowing, and to my eyes unintelligible, surges gracefully from right to left. The signs point out streets and historical sights, banks and juice bars, fast food restaurants. The West and this modern Arab city converge on an unassuming street corner, where the familiar roof of the pizza hut logo hovers above striking Arabic letters, signaling posters and interior décor that seems more familiar in Indiana than Egypt.
Kris, Jackie and I met for four days to explore the sights, scenes and contradictions of this modern and ancient marvel. Egyptians seem to be welcoming people. Most brim with smiles, asking where you come from with unconjugated verbs, impressive since many have learned there English simply talking to tourists. “Egypt good?” they ask. Very good, we reply. Jackie and I remained perpetual tourists, she from Korea and me from England, while Kris was spoken to in Arabic and told by everyone we met that he had an Egyptian face and must have had an Egyptian parent. Even though his Latin roots place him firmly on another continent, he was everywhere welcomed as a brother from another mother.
We wandered through downtown, trying to look as if we knew where we were going. Our hostel, on the sixth floor of an antiquated eight story building, was full of tourists of all ages and nationalities, in Egypt for varied periods and reasons, many on their way to somewhere else. The friendly Egyptian staff were keen to teach us belly dancing and to pick up some of our salsa moves.
We explored the Egyptian museum, whose more than 160,000 items would require a four and a half month commitment if one where to look at each for only one minute. The paper explanations glued to the windows of rustic wooden and glass cases explained in Arabic and English what was to be found inside. We tried multiple times to join tours to get more details and anecdotes, alternating between guides speaking lilting English, Spanish, or Korean as well as translating for each other. Here we were bemused by the hundreds of small mummies, by the explanations that hundreds of other important objects were to be found in Britain and France (who goes to Britain to see Egyptian artifacts? Shouldn’t they be in Egypt?). We were awed by jewelry of gold and turquoise, connecting us directly to a world five thousand years old. We stood open mouthed at Tatankuman(sp?)’s golden and turquoise sarcophagus, whose eyes of ivory and ebony still seem as if they might track you as you move stiltedly out of the impressive presence of past kings.
We explored Cairo’s mosques, removing our shoes, Jackie and I putting on the hoods of our sweatshirts so that we could have permission to enter. Al-Azhar, one of Cairo’s most famous places of worship led us through a millennia of history, from the courtyard built in 971 to the second room of worship facing mecca, built in the 1800’s and still used five times a day by Muslim men from all over the city. Just after we left, the call to prayer beckoned countless followers into the mosque, just as it has done for hundreds of years.
These and our many other adventures provided us a glimpse into another world, one where ancient and contemporary cultures, artifacts and lives merge on a daily basis. As other tourists, I felt both an integral part of the city and a bystander as things rushed around all around me, people making their lives, getting their groceries, going to work. In all, both I and everyone else, bustled along.

Quarterly Report Number 2

Hi All, I know that I have been terrible about updating this recently. (For two months!) I have been writing some things, but nothing was finsihed, but I have decided I have to put stuff up, even if that means some things will be backlogged. The last two months, in short, have been wonderful, I had many visitors, (Thank you my family, Steph, Sara and Sarah!) and sillily allowed their presences to dissuade me from writing as much as I ws used to. Now however, after spending four adventure packed days in Cairo with Kris and Jackie, I am back on my own to explore a new continent, leaving tomorrow for Dar Es Salaam Tanzania and the East African Fine Coffee Association Conference (could i get any more specific?). More information to follow... But for the timebeing, here is some sort of synthesis of my last three months as sent to my sponsors at TJW, see what you think...

Quarterly Report Number 2
Xela, Panimaquip, Atitlan, Panajachel, Santa Anita, La Florida, Chuvل, Antigua. The varied names of Guatemalan cities, regions and communities underscore their varied histories and heritage. I spent the last three months in these places attempting to understand a little bit of that diversity sifted through the particular culture of coffee production. During that time, I had the opportunity to hike into communities all around Lake Atitlan that were gravely affected by Hurricane Stan. In these communities, I was able to do interviews in addition to helping an organization of coffee farmers with a diagnostic survey on damage caused by the hurricane. I was able to meet with the owners of both medium and large scale coffee plantations, to see how their processes differed, and observe the situation of workers under these circumstances. I also spent various weeks in two cooperative communities of small-scale farmers, clearing brush, doing interviews, building trails, attending meetings, playing with children and trying various new kinds of fruit. Each of these experiences has enriched my understanding of coffee, cooperatives, international trade, Fair Trade, political theory, history, and human relations, while unearthing countless new questions and aspects of a project that seems to get bigger and more complicated as I dig deeper.
Rather than entering directly into a community for an extended period, as I begun my time in Nicaragua, my first adventures in Guatemala brought me a new kind of interaction. Accompanying an engineer from APOCS, an organization of coffee producers, I clambered through fields and over cobbled and muddy roads into various rural communities around Lake Atitlan, one of Guatemala's best known tourist attractions. These villages, far out of view of most tourists, were hit hardest by Hurricane Stan. I was there to assess the damage. This consisted primarily of my coming into communities for a morning, or a day, talking to a few people, taking a few photos, and hiking out again. The experience was educational in the variety of places and people with which I had contact, but less enriching from the perspective of really getting to spend more time, talk, and learn about the inner-workings of each locality.
One of the most revealing experiences of these three months has been, paradoxically, getting out of the cooperatives. I contacted some of Guatemala's coffee producing elite, and thereby was able to visit various medium as well as huge coffee estates and plantations. While this aspect of coffee production was not what I set out to study, getting to see it more closely has greatly enriched the project. These plantations, more than the cooperatives, are the history of coffee production. This model has dominated, and is a foundation of the industry. Getting better acquainted with it shows its strengths and weaknesses, and helps me to better understand the internal power structure of this international business. I met with international coffee brokers (I didn't even know what a broker was before!) and plantation owners, learning that in Guatemala, even Fair Trade producers and importers run their crop through these market mechanisms. I better understand the situation of small-scale farmers, both as newly landed peasants and as workers with a history. It has let me see why many judged a need to develop Fair Trade as an alternative model to plantation coffee farming. There are many ways to do business, and the ones that are not based on workers' rights or small-scale production are not wrong. They are something that I need to know about. It is in this way that I will better understand where the cooperative model fits into the larger picture of global coffee production. I can identify with more precision both who is behind the push for cooperative organization and the push against it. I am better able to see what is at stake on both sides, what works well on each, and therefore hopefully construct a well-rounded picture of this microcosm.
This experience has challenged me to examine my own preconceptions about wealth and its relationship to social inequity, as well as my prejudices against those at the other end of the economic spectrum I am examining. It has shown me new heights of social inequity, while introducing me to charming, well-educated people. It provides an illustration of Guatemala's power structure that has allowed me to better understand the nation's violent and war-torn past, as well as the multiple existing visions for its future. Here I see Guatemala's many facets, all of which will shape her path.
The other extreme of these large-scale, big business ventures is the two communities in which I spent various weeks. Santa Anita La Union and La Florida are two communities of well-organized small-scale producers. One is a group of indigenous, ex-guerilla fighters; the other, a newly founded community that just received access to land after two years of occupation and litigation. Both communities were operating largely on their own; they were not affiliated directly with an umbrella cooperative as were the communities I visited in Nicaragua. I was faced with innumerable questions: How were they organized? What was their history? Their aspirations for the future? From where did they receive support? How did they find their markets? Who provides them with technical assistance? What projects have they invested in? What are their priorities for change?
In Guatemala, the horrors of military violence, social inequity, repression and poverty are unnervingly apparent. Histories of oppression, dependency, and subsistence living pervade agricultural communities. The nation's history seems to vacillate between the ideals expressed by the plantation model and a more campesino-oriented paradigm. Considering this history, it is enlightening, uplifting, and heartbreaking to witness firsthand the determination with which Guatemalan farmers devote themselves to making their land produce once it is theirs. To see how hard they work to give their children an education and a roof with no leaks. To hear again and again that all they do, they do so their children will have a better future. It is wonderful to see how organizing –how coming together—they have aided themselves in this process.
Daily life in these communities is a perpetual lesson in political theory. Individual or collective land titles? Communal work plans or private management? Mandatory organizations and meetings or to each his own? Most of the answers lie somewhere in the middle, but it is fascinating to observe how the people answer them for themselves. Whether or not they work land collectively, when, where, how much, is decided through democratic dialogue. Fortunately for me, almost all members of these communities had opinions they were willing to share on these issues.
In each community, the members also showed me a new level of commitment to their lives and farms. I asked one of the ex-guerillas, is this life what you spent eighteen years in the mountains and ten years in exile for? He said yes without hesitation. In Guatemala as in Nicaragua, I was welcomed with open arms into communities, homes, and lives. People were willing to teach me to cook as well as de-weed coffee fields and harvest the cherries. At a patron saints celebration, I was swept first onto the dance floor to the shrieking excitement of everyone present. The Chela was learning to dance marimba with one of their own. I was impressed by new levels of contentment, of excitement about the prospects that lay ahead even in the face of great difficulty. One woman with whom I ate, Francisca, was living with her four children in a converted horse stable. The wooden walls went up about four feet, the space between there and the tin roof was covered over with cardboard and pieces of tin. Yet somehow, her excitement at being there erased the holes in the walls, the wind blowing through, filling the space with love and family amidst the few pots, pans and mattresses occupying the various corners. Francisca could hardly contain her excitement at the proximity of running water, which would save her two hours walk during the dry season to wash clothes and fetch cooking water.
In Guatemala, I had more access to nuts and bolts information than in some of the larger cooperatives. I actually had all the finances of Santa Anita explained to me, and was privileged to hear a critique of the Fair Trade system from the cooperative's past president. He explained to me the costs of certifications, of shipping, of harvests, illustrating that even making Fair Trade prices the community barely breaks even. This leads me to other questions: Why is this? How important are international certifiers? Should there be a limit on their size and income? What is a fair share for those that are regulating and ensuring Fair Trade conditions? How do you create direct trade and make it legitimate for consumers without falling into traps of bureaucracy that decrease its efficiency? To these questions, I do not yet have answers.
One of the most important things that I am realizing this section of the trip is just how big this project really is. Each day I feel like I have new questions, other aspects of organization, of the coffee trade, of Fair Trade, of human nature, that I want to explore and that are related to the underlying inquiries of the project. I realize more and more that even at the end of this year, with a rounded understanding of many of the issues, I will still only have a perspective on a small piece of this many faceted puzzle. I am hoping to be able to return to Guatemala as I feel there are so many things that I didn't get to do, so many people I didn't get to talk to. I am excited to travel to Africa, but also sad to leave this part of the world, to which I have grown very attached. I am already planning new ways to get back, to learn more, question more, and get deeper into all of the amazing places this time has allowed me to discover.

APOCS Relief Essay

I wrote this essay about some work that I helped with in Guatemala in November. Though I didn't finish it until recently, I still thought it was relevant and decided to put it up here despite its tardy arrival.

Rainiero and Marta Julia work away the hours in their respective corners of the unassuming office of the Association of Organic Coffee Producers of Sololá. These days they are working particularly hard. APOCS is a small organization administered out of two rooms in the Jucan-Ya neighborhood of Panajachel on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. .
For a short period, the area surrounding Lake Atitlan was the center of world news reports because it was extremely hard hit in early October by hurricane Stan. Now APOCS uses its energy to further the relief effort for devastated coffee farmers. An important part of the work is to make people understand the human tragedy that has occurred and that this tragedy is ongoing and requires our continued attention in the form of financial support and volunteer efforts.
Coming into the lake, the devastation is painfully visible and unbelievable. The mountainsides that were uniformly lush and green are now marked by vast gashes of exposed earth where landslides have swept away hundreds of thousands of tons of earth, rocks and plants. Houses, crops, livelihoods and loved ones were swept away as well. Now, many weeks later crucially important highway bridges are being reconstructed so that businesses can be put back together, homes can be rebuilt and gradually lives can be reinvented.
Right now, Guatemala’s small scale coffee producers are entering the harvest season. They are struggling to make it through, many of them with no houses, with their communities destroyed and with their coffee fields under mudslides or dropping leaves and coffee cherries due to stress from too much rain. However; they are working on making it through.
I spent two weeks in November hiking into these communities, all of which are affiliated with APOCS. In order to effectively meet the needs of these farmers impacted by Hurricane Stan, APOCS and Manos Campesinas took it upon themselves to perform a diagnostic of the damage caused by the storm. Eddy Garcia, an agricultural technician and professor from Solola, was in charge of the project and I was allowed to tag along. We were sent out to interview, photograph destruction and assess the damage to the 30 plus coffee producing cooperatives and associations of Atitlan..
We boarded buses and the beds of open pick-up trucks in order to reach many of these remote locations. We hiked up cobbled and dirt roads and met with gracious shy, but determined farmers in one-room cooperative offices operating on the front porches of the local stores or around people’s kitchens.
I cannot recount the scores of stories from farmers and families. I traveled into each of these small communities for a day or for an afternoon and I was faced with sights of destruction and renewed poverty. Women were carrying heavy buckets of water kilometers to get it to the house since Stan had destroyed the pipe system that supplied Panamaquip’s water supply. Men walked me to their parcels once covered with coffee trees and now submerged under meters of mud and boulders. Farmers showed me how their stressed trees had dropped leaves thereby endangering what remained of their source of income, the small portion of their coffee crop left after the wind and the rain subsided. Houses were half visible buried in mud while some were unusable as they now teetered over ravines carved out by torrents of rain water that poured down from the mountainsides and into the lake.
Despite the damage done in each of these places, the farmers welcomed Eddy and me with smiles, water and a place to sit down. They thanked us profusely for the interest in their current predicament that our presence demonstrated and for the possibility of relief in the future. They shared their stories with us as well as showing us what was lost, but they also imparted anecdotes of some successes. In one community, holding tanks for irrigation water, constructed a year ago through a cooperative project, turned out to be the only reliable source of drinking water for the entire community during the crisis. The association and its member families are now looking into constructing more tanks in the future. I was shown how natural wind barriers, constructed of trees, corn or other plants that were part of ecological projects to further soil conservation actually saved some parcels from landslides. Each of these positive examples illustrates how prior organization and education done by farmers aided them in the critical days following Stan.
In the months since the hurricane, many groups and individuals have appeared to help to meet the immediate needs of farmers. Through such organizations as Sustainable Harvest and it’s Relief Funds as well as other NGOs and local organizations and the Guatemalan government , food, clothing, and other necessities have been given out. Some of these replaced the staples of corn and beans which farmers grew for their own consumption that were lost in the Hurricane. The reconstruction of homes has been completed in many communities and farmers work to rebuild terraces and fences even as they resign themselves to significantly lowered incomes due to losses from the coffee harvest as well as losses from secondary productions such as tomatoes, cucumbers and avocadoes. Yet they work day by day, to get through this year with whatever they can, grateful for the indispensable aid that has reached them from outside.
However; one of the things most stressed in the report of the survey is the fact that the crisis does not end this year. Even after the horrendous losses of this year are calculated there are long term effects to be seen in the future. There will be losses in years to come due to the drop in production from lost trees that take years to grow again.. It takes three years for coffee trees to mature enough to produce beans. Farmers will contend with nutrient depletion from the loss of topsoil. They will have to restore shade trees that provide necessary canopy for the coffee plants. Many farmers will spend some years digging out parcels that lie four feet under sand and rock and mud. It is a long arduous trip back to the self sufficiency they were creating. It is good to remember that victims continue to struggle long after the immediate empathy and support generated by a catastrophe has receded. These trials brought by Mother Nature set back the achievements and successes generated by committed farmers who wish to better their communities and the lives of their children with hard work and mutual support. Continued contributions and volunteer work and creative ideas will always be a necessary component that all of us can provide.