travel blog

19 March 2010

We left Tegucigalpa on the 16th. The drive is through southeastern Honduras, winding up through mountains and then down again across dry dusty scrubby plains. There is coffee here too, actually Honduras's biggest when you consider volume. But coffee companies in this area are after volume, and the quality is secondary.

We cross the border at Las Manos. You know the border is near from the queue of semitrucks and school buses that are backed up down the steep winding road waiting to cross to Nicaragua. This is the border crossing where Manuel Zeleya made his symbolic entrance to Honduras after the Michelleti coup regime removed him from office last summer. Zeleya approached the border here backed by supporters and then symbolically lifted the chains that block the road, crossing some meters into Honduras before retreating back to Nicaragua in the face of heavy police and army presence.

In Nicaragua the road winds down again, and is in MUCH better condition. Road maintenance is terrible all in all in Honduras, but clearly something different in Nicaragua, at least here. Our hired Toyota High Ace raced down through the lush coffee rich Sierra de Dipilto mountains towards Esteli.

Our destination Esteli is located in a dry dusty plain. Esteli is the home of Fundacion Entre Mujeres, (La Fem) a cooperative linking five communities. It is a women's coffee cooperative, and we wanted to learn more. We were met on Wednesday by Juana Villareyna a coordinator with FEM. It was around 9 am and La Fem had already been out driving around the town's hotels looking for us. We had a full day ahead of us.

We piled into one of their pick ups, seven people in an extended cab, our kids sitting on our laps. We drove back towards Honduras, across the dry plain and then winding up into the foothills. Then we turned off, driving more steeply up a paved road. And by paved I mean with individually laid paving bricks. We even passed a couple of crews repairing the road, tamping down individual bricks one by one, kilometer after kilometer. When we passed through La Puebla Nueva the paved road ended and we continued on a rough dirt road crossing dry river beds on newish cement bridges. After about 15 kilometers we arrived at a little community where we were greeted by about 20 women from La Fem. It was one of La Fem's member cooperatives, Cafe de Mujeres. This group produces 70 percent of the organic high grown coffee which La Fem exports.

We spent a couple of hours here hearing presentations and stories from the women, and eating lunch. They expressed in words and smiles how happy they were to see us, and that they thought it was pretty cool we brought our kids. They didn't expect that, and all had left their own kids at home (except one girl about Raja's age (5-6). Ziggy and Raja pretty much took care of themselves, playing out in the hot sun, mixing “cement” with water and dirt and building a speed bump / “mouse pathway” across the dirt track in front of the brick metal building we sat in. When Ziggy wasn't threatening to throw dirt or stones at them, they also played with some of the local kids that came curiously around.

After the presentations we loaded into our pickup and a toyota landcruiser and headed further up into the coffee mountains. Only the Land Cruiser could make this steep and rocky drive, so we sat about 10 people in the back of the pick up holding on tight as the car lurched upwards. The women who accompanied us are the coffee farmers, and they were taking us to their collectively owned farm. When they work here they walk, and use horses to transport the organic fertilizer in and the coffee cherries out at harvest time.

When we stop the women all climb out with big smiles and show us the coffee. Beautiful, healthy coffee plants, most about two to three meters high. Interspersed with the coffee are tall shade trees, and medium height, mango and lemon. The lemons were a type the size of grapefruit, and wonderfully aromatic. We found three of these enormous citrus fruits just laying on the ground.

After a presentation of the growing techniques, and a walk through the forest, with views out through the trees of towering cliffs reaching up to the sky, we climbed back into the pick up and went to see the wet mill, where the coffee cherries are processed. The wet mill is on the property of La Fem member Veronica Zavala, an small older woman who modestly contributed to explanations of how the processing is done. They use two processing techniques, a compact washer (which depulps the cherries and cleans the mucilage off) and a depulper with fermentation tanks. They primarily use the compact washer, like most of the processing plants we have seen. After depulping and or fermentation, the beans are “pre-dried” on screens, bagged, and then transported to the dry processing plant where they are either sundried on patios or tumble dried and then de-husked. Then they are ready for export or roasting.

We visited Veronica's house and saw her worm compost and coffee plant nursery before we said goodbye to the women from the cooperative and headed back towards Esteli. On the way we stopped briefly in at La FEM's nursery and organic fertilizer factory. Here they make fertilizer which is sold to cooperative members to apply to their crops. As we have seen at other organic coffee farms, they use a combination of fertilizers, including natural micro organisms as foliage application and to break down the leathery “waste” cherries from depulping, worm composts, and rock minerals. The nursery produces plants for new members and existing members to maintain their fincas.

After the nursery we returned to the offices of La FEM to meet with the cooperative's director, Diana Valenzuela. We heard more about the objectives of the cooperative including long and short term goals. Also the story of the beginning of the coop with emphasis on the benefits to the women members. Among many important aspects of the coffee trade we talked about was the “dark side” of the coffee industry. We are talking about the world's second largest commodity traded after oil, and this is an commodity which has it's roots in slavery. Slaves from Africa, and the exploitation of native peoples are what built the coffee industry in the beginning. Women have always been marginalized in this industry and this continues today. However, the issue at hand is not to focus on women as victims, but to move forward and for women to enter the whole production chain so they too can benefit from the potential profits of coffee production, and invest in the local community.

So ends our day at La FEM. A fantastic experience which deeply impressed us with the mission and work of the cooperative. We were especially moved by the gathering of the women from the Cafe de Mujeres, who walked from their homes, leaving their work and families to meet with us and show us what they doing in their communities and showing us the coffee they grow. We are deeply thankful to all the women who gave us this special day.

15 March 2010

Dear coffee friends,
I feel really far away from the roastery now. We are in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. It is about 35 degrees during the day, and cooler but not cool at night.  A big dirty and fast paced city, with shanty towns on the hills, and fancy hotels with swimming pools downtown.  A big change from the last week which we spent in smaller, safer country side villages. But it is also good to be here. It is also a beautiful city of old and new buildings and lots of really steep hills.

Maybe I feel far away from the roastery, but I feel very close to the coffee. It is SO cool to see this all. The coffee people have just been so nice and we have had a most amazing coffee education in the course of about one week.  Basically everything from planting a coffee nursery, making organic fertilizer,  planting the trees out, pruning, shade trees (banana, mango, other fruits I don't know), harvesting, transport to the wet processing installations, drying patios, de-hullers (for the pergamin (the coffee husk), sorting machings, hand selection of beans vs automatic sorting, selling, exporting, cooperative structures, cupping, roasting over wood fires in hand turned drums and so much more.

We have been in Marcala for the regional coffee festival there. There were some fantastic coffees from a variety of private and cooperative producers. There are several I am interested in buying including a special lot from COMUCAP and a lot from COMBRIFOL a cooperative on the Honduras - El Salvador border. Mixture of  El Salvadoran refugees and ex guerrillas. They took 8th place in the cupping here.

Tomorrow we travel to Esteli in the north of Nicaragua. There we will spend only two nights, but we will visit La Fem, another women's cooperative. We are really looking forward to this especially after our visit to COMUCAP which we had mixed feelings about. We are curious if La Fem is a bit more our style. More on that later...

We had a great trip last week to El Salvador and the COMUS cooperative. They had a tough year with coffee growing... a bad harvest and rain at the wrong time which caused premature flowering... But they still have their hearts set on growing great coffee and we are looking forward to supporting that when the time comes. After a few days there some of the COMUS people rented a mini bus and Maria and our two kids and me rode along with 5 COMUS members through the mountains to Honduras. They decided to come to the Marcala coffee festival to gain some inspiration.  That was so fantastic to do that trip together, and along they road we listed to stories of life under the revolution, and visited the museum of the revolution in Perquin, El Salvador, a beautiful mountain town and former heart of the guerrilla resistance.

Well that is my dispatch from coffee country. Best wishes to all of you out there!
Patrick

13 FEBRUARY 2010

The Just Coffee Denmark family (Patrick, Maria and our two kids) will be travelling in Central America soon. Our basic plan will be to visit the women's coffee cooperative COMUCAP in the Marcala region of Honduras. We will also try and visit one of the participating cooperatives of our Nicaraguan coffee Tierra Nueva. While in Nicaragua we want to visit La Fem, another womens coffee cooperative which is doing wonderful things in their region (near Jinotega in the north of Nicaragua). If we can manage it, we would love to make a visit to El Salvador, and the COMUS coffee growers there.

On our way to Central America we will visit our friends at Just Coffee in Madison, Wisconsin. We are looking forward to renewing our connections with them and filling up on inspiration from what all the folks there are working on.

At the collective farm with members of La Fem.

Veronica Zavala at one of the FEM wet mills. This facility can depulp and wash or ferment the mucilage of the coffee cherry and bean. Then the coffee is pre dried on site before further processing.

Coffee plants at the FEM nursery and organic fertilzer production facility. The biggest coffee plants are about six months old.

Wood fired roaster at the Marcala coffee festival. Joselinda and her assistant at the controls.

Cupping at the Marcala coffee festival, 12 March

A coffee float in the parade from the Raos cooperative with a coffee queen candidate.