It was but a dream

Well, I've been back in Boston for just over a week now and it's hard to believe I was ever in Peru. I spent most of the work week going through all my photos, audio files, and video footage and trying to organize it. I'm excited about the projects I'll be able to put together using all this material. I really hope I can tell the story of San Fernando, and tell it well enough that we sell more of their coffee!

Now, let me tell you a little bit about the trip. We spent the first few nights in the capital city of Lima, and had a meeting with a national coffee board that supports small coffee producers (like those Equal Exchange works with). We also toured the secondary-level co-op (named COCLA) that processes and ships the coffee to Equal Exchange (and then we roast it in our warehouse).

From Lima, we flew to Cuzco. This was my favorite city in Peru. It was so beautiful, but with an altitude of 12,000 feet, most of us didn't feel quite right. The high altitude made breathing difficult, and with less oxygen in the air, the pollution seemed heavier. It also made us feel dizzy and disoriented. Basically, drunk. Regardless, Cuzco had a lot of charm and character and I loved the local market and all the crafts found there. I wish I could have spent more time exploring the city.

From Cuzco, we started the journey to San Fernando in two vans. This was a very long journey. We left at 8 a.m. and after a flat tire, a 3-hour road closure, and a very foggy mountain ride, we arrived to San Fernando at almost 4 a.m. They had expected us to arrive much earlier, around dinnertime. We were all so tired and happy to finally be there. We had been driving on bumpy, winding dirt roads for about 10 hours. Luckily, we were actually at a lower altitude in San Fernando (about 6,000 feet), so I didn't experience any of the disorientation that Cuzco had caused.

We went straight to bed in our homestays (two of us visitors were each paired with a San Fernado family). My roommate was Gladys, who works at Equal Exchange and was born in Peru. Which means she knows the culture and speaks Spanish better than she does English! I was very excited to be with a Spanish-speaker, as I was worried about the communication barrier with my host family.

We were more than pleasantly surprised to find we had beds, our own room, and even had electricity (we just had to clamp some wires to this box thing, I don't know, I'm not an electrician). And maybe best of all, the house had a brand new toilet! We were shocked by all this; we were expecting to have to pee in a hole in the ground (which we did do in other communities) and sleep on the dirt floor.

So, we spent four nights in the community. The days were filled with meetings, interviews, coffee picking, and traveling to other communities that are part of the San Fernando co-op. It took us four hours by car to get to the closest other community; seriously, those mountain roads take forever. And it also demonstrates how remote the communities are from each other. And since there aren't cars, they walk from community to community. This includes the children walking to school if there isn't a school in their community, which is one of the reasons fair trade is so important. The premiums are often used to build a school in the community, so that kids don't have to walk for hours and hours to get there.

Anyway, we were treated with such care and kindness everywhere we went. One of the communities greeted us with a band, a banner, and all the community members were lined up on the sides of the road to give each of us a hug, kiss, and/or handshake. They were so excited to meet us. Let me put this into perspective: Equal Exchange buys all of their organic coffee (which is most of their coffee). Everyone who lives in these communities farms coffee. Everyone. So, their entire livelihoods depend on the price they receive for their coffee. (Price is based largely on quality, so Equal Exchange has been working with the community on projects that increase their quality. We helped fund solar drying beds, which was partly why we came to visit - to check on the progress of these).

This whole relationship is pretty unique because the only place you can buy San Fernando coffee is in cafes in Philly and Ithaca, New York. There were owners from these cafes on the trip with us. The farmers loved meeting the people who sold their coffee every day.

When we walked through the community, all eyes were on us. I mean, naturally, we stuck out. Everyone greeted us with "Good morning" or "Good afternoon." I had fun trying to communicate with the kids. They were so cute, and were thrilled to have their picture taken and see it on the digital camera.

I'm realizing there's so much I could say. I will link anything I write for Equal Exchange publications to my blog. The experience was so unique and I'm still processing it all. It was hard to see how simply they lived, how important "community" was to all of them, and return to my American life full of material possessions. And it just confirmed how much American culture emphasizes ideals like independence, privacy, and wealth. I definitely left the mountain community wondering which of us actually has the richer life when it comes to the things that really matter.

The one thing I am so grateful for, that I know they are struggling everyday to get, is education. I talked to women in the community who stopped attending school after second grade because their fathers told them they didn't need an education to work in the kitchen. The women were so happy to have their own children attending high school, and maybe they would leave the community and attend college.

It was somehow fitting to return to the United States in the middle of a financial crisis, in the middle of messy presidential campaigning, and just shake our heads. This country has a lot of growing up to do.