Ecuador Journal Entries 2009 (Part 2)
Friday, September 18, 2009 at 4:57AM Sept. 9, 2009
Go to work.
In the morning, I remark to Bernardo Castro in Spanish. "Doesn't this weather remind you of Thanksgiving?" He looks at me for a moment. Tilts his head to the side and opens his mouth ever so slightly. I remember that Thanksgiving is an American holiday and smile trying to give a little extra raise in my eyebrows.
Where am I? At "Finca Organica" on the Maquipucuna Reserve. A farm from which we will for the first timein three years we will pull a sample green beans to take back to 1000faces for sample roasting and analysis. I feel first date jitters of excitement and intrigue. Coffee tree's take a couple of years to yield any fruit, and we are excited to see that for the first time this farm is starting to produce.
From dawn to dusk, the day is filled with coffee farms of all shapes and sizes. We are zipping through the winding roads from one farm to the next meeting with farmer after farmer and strolling coffee forest after coffee forest. My heart races with excitement. Often times in between stops I ride in the back of the pick-up truck and stare out over the rolling green hills, and though each rattle of the truck touches my spine and send shock waves all over my back and lower body, I hardly notice we are even moving. Sometimes you just need to sit back and dream when the machine gets going.
Sept. 10, 2009
Finca Orongo. On the morning of Sept. 10, 2009 I rode in a white pick-up truck with Bernardo Castro to the blessed jewel of the alliance of Cafe Choco Andes farms, known to us simply as 'Finca Orongo.' The truth and history of Finca Orongo is a beauty that few have had the pleasure to truly understand. And when I arrive, it is this beauty, that drives me to pick up a machete the moment I arrive and storm off into the hillside alone.
Orongo is a coffee farm that stands as the hope of what the future can bring. A mountainside farm owned by the Maquipucuna Foundation that started off as a re-forestation effort. What was once a deforested part of the lush rainforest, has been totally and sacredly revitalized with lush tree's of all sorts. And mixed within the diverse plethora of tree's are some of the most majestic coffee tree's any farm has ever produced. In 2008, 1000 Faces was the first coffee company in the world to directly import these beans into the our facility. We roasted them, and more often then I can ever recall, we were told without waver, that the coffee that this farm produced was some of the best coffee the public had ever passed through the lips.
Orongo is a well kept secret beauty, that few have ever had the honor to set foot on. While we are their filming I make special note to Jason to just film without words or commentary. I want the land to speak, I want the silent images of roaster and farmer standing side by side to speak, I want the world to see something that holds them in wonder and still, deep down, I know this is a impossible task. I realize that the meaning of this farm to me and the people who work the steep slopes can never truly be translated to others in the same way in which our lives have been transformed. Each of us has our crucibles.
Upon leaving Orongo we travel into the small and otherwise deserted town of Santa Elaina to watch in a cut out porch Ecuador's national soccer team play Bolivia in La Paz. I try to watch, but I am altered by Orongo. Without the ability to sit still, I steal a ride up a winding road with Jason by my side. We are able to find beers and a cold river to jump into in our under shorts. In a daze, we later emerge from the water to find that Rodrigo has accidentally backed his truck off a steep cliff. One axle is hanging over the divide, and the wheels spin in the dangerous air as he tries to rev his way out of mess. Townspeople come from out of no where and we all push with all our might to rescue the truck from it's peril. For a moment, everything in the world is in it's place. For a moment, we are doing what we can and this is all that needs to be done.
Film here now.
Sept. 11, 2009
Begin again. Begin again. Begin again.
I cannot say that I liked this day. Though occasionally we must scratch and claw our way through the day. So for this day, I travelled with a new gentlemen in the area from Belgium whom had begun to collectivize small farmers as well. He wanted to show me his project and get feedback from me and when he told me that he was taking me to many small coffee farms in a particular region I had never explored, I was excited. What I found however was something very different then cherries to analyze or samples to collect. What I found where old men, with no tree's but only seedlings recently planted in the ground. My rough estimations of soil content and altitude told me in my heart of hearts, that this was not the right place to grow coffee and that this gentleman from Belgium was selling dreams that he had hallucinated himself into manufacturing. He told me that one day these poor farmers would be like their rich Colombian brothers to the north. Driving fancy cars one day to the gates of their farms. I want to puke. But sometimes this is where it begins. I spoke my fears to them, they didn't like my look. I walked most of the day in shame. An outcast. It felt horrible.
I was able to make a break and escape this delusional quest, to travel some three more hours North to the town of Paraiso. This was my very first coffee farm experience three years ago and three years had passed since I had returned in person to meet with the farmers whom we buy from their. Someone once told me when I was starting this business, that one day they would have parades in my honor in Ecuador. I arrived not to parades, but a silence that was something better. The people had trouble remembering me, but the beauty was that they did. I deeply enjoyed seeing my one of my favorite farmers in the world, Maurico Cournado and we walked his land and looked at his harvest. The year was a bad one, but we looked each other in the eyes and I promised him that I would return and looked forward to returning again after that return. For a brief period of time, coffee didn't matter and their was a good sense of friendship between two men of similar ages from different parts of the world.
Sept. 12, 2009, Quito
While in the capital of Quito killing the final hours of this journey I venture into a artisan market off a side street. The place is jam packed with the rich artisan history of small pueblos really untouched by the world. There are fabrics of all colors and jewelry of all kinds. I am a man who has been for the better part of the last two years riddled by the facets of love. My charisma has the ability to draw in great strangers and force them to leave me just as quickly. Always leaving me with great opportunity to wallow and challenge God for the fate he has cast upon what I might otherwise consider the most important life project there is. A sweet man appears at a booth, and his silver rings catch my eye. "For your wife?" I nod my head in accord. The man sees that I am quite plausibly the Narciuss that young Herman Hesse once was. He can see that though my dreams are great, that doesn't mean that the moment isn't something of a tangled forest. Much like these mountains in which I have placed my life and work over the past week, the idea or act of buying a silver ring for a unknown love is something I am constantly doing with coffee farms, agriarians, film-makers, and project managers from Norway. And it is the most beautiful ring I have ever seen. It slips into my pocket in a velvet bag and I slip out of the market, no body remembers the dark night. No one knows as I leave that though I travel without home for the dream carries us past the walls. The dream is the sacred plough. Which the study hands walks out upon the waters to stir the oceans. Create the waves. Settle the tides. In all directions and for every reason. We plough the sea.
True revolution is without direction. It is wheat in wind.
End By Benjamin Myers, Sept. 18, 2009
Reader Comments (2)
hello, i am a peace corps volunteer in ecuador, but not in the coffee regions. just wondering in what provincia orongo is located.
Orongo is in the Pinchincha Province