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.

I'm back!

I had an amazing time in Peru. More details to come, but here are some photos from the trip (click on the album cover).

En Peru!

Voy a Peru

Lots to update on!

1. It is nearly my 1-year anniversary in Boston! I arrived on Sept. 16 of last year. It's hard to believe I've been here a year already, and yet, it feels like I've been here much longer. I've learned a lot about post-college living. More on that another time.

2. My 1-year review at Equal Exchange is tomorrow (we're doing it a little early since I am leaving for Peru -- see #3). That's when I sit down with my supervisor, talk about the year and read what a bunch of my co-workers wrote about me. My vote will follow in the next month or so to determine if I become an official worker-owner of the company (if I don't pass the vote, I am fired). It has been a good year and I am confident that I will pass the vote. Then I will have official stock in the company and will be able to vote on issues related to the business.

3. I leave for Peru on Sunday morning!! My trip is Sept. 14-29. I'll be going to Cuzco, rural parts up in the Andes to visit coffee farmers, Machu Picchu and then to Lima. The last five days of the trip are vacation time. It's spring there so the weather should be nice, in the low 70s. I will take TONS of photos (and video footage for work) that I will definitely post when I get back.

4. If you're interested in seeing one aspect of my job, here's a short piece I wrote that we posted on our blog. I also wrote/edited a bunch of stuff in our last newsletter (I oversee the whole newsletter production)

Well, that's a super abbreviated version but I have bags to pack and Spanish to learn!

Adios amigos! Hasta en dos semanas!

'Black Gold'

I finally watched Black Gold, a documentary made five years ago about coffee farmers in Ethiopia. It follows a co-op manager, Tadesse Meskela, as he tries to get higher prices for the coffee farmers. Equal Exchange buys from the co-op (Tadesse visited Equal Exchange a couple years ago for our 20th Anniversary party). Anyway, it really put a face to the poverty many coffee farmers are living in, largely because of the low prices they receive from major corporations that control the food industry - like Nestle, Proctor & Gamble, Starbucks and Kraft. I encourage anyone who drinks a cup of coffee to watch it. You'll see the benefits of the fair trade/co-op supply chain.

There & Back Again

PART TWO - Across the Mitten

I definitely made my rounds. I was in East Lansing, Kalamazoo, Hastings and Detroit visiting friends and family at a wedding (my high school friend Betsy got married), a goodbye party (for my friend Nikki from MSU) and a surprise birthday party (for my aunt Sheryl).

During my down time at my parents' house, I took advantage of free food and cable. And my parents' company. I even saw my sister for about 15 minutes.

Oh, I also saw "Batman: The Dark Knight" and "Mamma Mia" while I was in Kalamazoo. Both were enjoyable in very different ways.

Before I knew it, I was at Detroit Metro Airport with my suitcase in hand. My plane was two hours late leaving Detroit and I had a connecting flight to make in New York City. I knew it was going to be close. I got off with about 40 minutes before my next flight was scheduled to depart for Boston at 9 p.m. I had to exit the airport, run across the street to a different terminal, go through security again and made it to my gate about 15 minutes before it started boarding. Whew!

As the plane departed NYC, fireworks were going off at the baseball stadium. It was a spectacular sight to fly over them and into the night sky.

It was a nice visit to Michigan, but I was relieved when I safely made it back to Boston and could relax after a busy vacation.

There & Back Again

Well, I’m finally getting a chance to write about my recent visit to Michigan. If was certainly action-packed.

PART ONE – The Drive

As most of you know, the plan was for me to drive my car from Boston to Michigan, where it would stay for good (I bought a plane ticket for the trip back). The car has been a lot of trouble for me in Boston, and with public transportation and a vanpool for the work commute, it’s not necessary to have it.

So, I left Boston by 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday. Since my a/c hasn’t been working, and my cd player/radio was stolen in February (along with the car itself), it was a very hot and very quiet ride. But the first 9 or so hours went really smoothly. I crossed into Canada around 5:30 p.m., and just as I was trying to accelerate back onto the highway, I realized something was very wrong with my car. It would not accelerate. I pleaded and pleaded with my car to cooperate, but it was just too exhausted to move any further.

I pulled over to the side of the road. I was maybe only half a mile from Customs, which was reassuring. I could walk there if I needed to. But then what? I was still five hours from Michigan, and 10 hours away from Boston. And, I was in Canada. I popped my hood, and grabbed the oil I had purchased earlier in the day just in case I needed to fill it up at some point on the road. I have never put oil in my car before, and have only watched other people check the oil, but I managed to check it myself and realized it was fine. So the malfunction wasn’t the oil. It wasn’t the gas. That was pretty much the extent of what I knew about fixing cars.

I tried calling my parents, and neither answered. We had been in communication throughout the day, and now, when I needed to talk to them, they were unreachable. Of course.

I tried not to look panicked while I panicked, leaning under the hood of my car, on the side of an entrance ramp to a Canadian highway. But I must have looked panicked, because after only a few minutes, a car that had passed by pulled over and started backing up toward me.

A woman got out of the car. “Are you O.K.?” she asked. “I saw you and I couldn’t just leave you here without knowing first.”

I explained what had happened so far and where I was headed. It turned out Lisa was also from Michigan, and was going just 50 miles from East Lansing – my destination for the night.

Several times she told me that I shouldn't worry, she wasn't a “masher,” and while I didn’t know what a “masher” was, I was glad she wasn’t one. Lisa had her 20-year-old son, Mike, with her in the passenger seat. Mike has Down’s syndrome. He smiled at me from the sideview mirror. Lisa looked about 45 years old. She talked a lot and while I wasn't listening to everything she was saying, it was comforting to know she was there with me.

After I finally got in touch with my dad, and talked my options over with him, I decided to just try and keep driving my poor Toyota Tercel toward Michigan. My first obstacle was a huge bridge, which was down to one lane, thanks to construction. I was really scared that I wouldn’t make it over the steep bridge, and hundreds of cars behind me would be furious. “I’ll follow you, and push your car with my bumper if I have to,” Lisa reassured me. So we went for it.

My car jerked like crazy and made noises out of the exhaust pipe as I accelerated up and up the bridge. I drove with my flashers on, and kept checking my rearview mirror to make sure Lisa was still there. She was. I prayed the whole time across the bridge. And I made it.

I exited the highway at an information center just over the bridge. I told Lisa my car seemed alright once I got moving. She said she would stay with me on the drive, if I wanted, until we got to Michigan. I took her up on her offer and thanked her again and again. She just told me, “Do you know how many people have helped me in situations like this? That’s why we’re on this earth – to help other people. Just pay it forward.”

So, she did stay with me. She knew some shortcuts through Canada, so I followed her, but she told me if my car started acting up, I should turn on my flashers and pull over, and she would do the same. We made several bathroom and gas stops throughout the evening, and chatted at each stop. We drove through three crazy thunderstorms, with some of the worst lightening I’ve ever seen, and rain so intense I could barely see anything. I felt powerless as nature poured down on me. I just kept my eyeballs glued to her bumper the whole way, occasionally seeing huge bolts of lightening out of my side vision.

When we finally made it into Michigan, I was so relieved. It was around 10 p.m. Our final stop was just before U.S. Customs, and we exchanged e-mail addresses and hugged goodbye. She took a photo of Mike and I, and promised to send it to me.

After an hour, Lisa got off the highway at her exit and I kept driving another hour until I finally made it to East Lansing. As we went our separate ways, she waved out her window and I honked my farewell.

I rolled into East Lansing around midnight. It was an exhausting and stressful evening, but also inspiring. A reminder that there are still good people out there.

mt. mooselauke

i had a nice 4th of july weekend.
it began with sam adam's summer variety pack.
four of us went to see the fireworks over the charles river in downtown boston.
it was very crowded and there was no wind so all the smoke blocked some of the fireworks.
still, it was pretty.

on saturday i didn't do much. just hung around the house.
on sunday, jessica and i drove to new hampshire to the white mountains.
we hiked mt. mooselauke. it was a 7.5-mile trail that looped to the top of the 4,802 foot mountain. It was kinda intense. the way up was basically like climbing stairs for 2.5 straight hours, but instead of stairs they were rocks. the way down was a bit easier.

it was definitely worth the pain - so beautiful!