Working for a living

I have spent the past two days getting to learn more about harvesting coffee, the hard way. The beneficios or coffee buyers are just starting to receive this year’s crop and since I live in a low altitude area, our coffee is mature faster than in other places. So, yesterday I dove into to work as a peon, or day laborer on a cafetal. After working yesterday and today picking red coffee berries, I would like to now survey all social science researchers who write about coffee to learn if they ever actually worked in it. I bet it would be about 50/50. Who knows. I started work today at 6, lunched at 9, got off at 12, and then rode to sell the coffee with my boss at 1. I worked 6 hours in the midst of tall, unruly coffee plants and earned a whopping $4.16 US dollars. This is not a fabrication. It’s what we all earned. And that’s the going rate. Of course, I am not working to earn money to live on, but one can see where it might be tough to live on such a salary. For this reason, most of the folks working were women. They get up at about 330 or 400 in order to get their housework done, then walk to the finca and pick coffee for six hours, and then I suppose they pass out or cook dinner, whatever comes first. I asked and apparently their husbands are off picking beans or working construction. But just in case you think that Juan Valdez is out there picking your beans, you might also start to envision the possibility of Juanita working her butt off as well.

My boss and I drove about 15 kilometers away to sell the coffee. He was very happy with his prices and looking forward to the next four pickings of his plants (we will be giving his crop four more passes, the next one in 15 days). It was a long day of work, but overall the past two days have taught me a whole heck of a lot. Learning by doing of course is probably the best way to learn.

An unanticipated but welcome consequence of my new peon status is that people are surprised and then delighted to hear that I am learning to pick coffee. When I told Flor and Gabriel that I was going to pick coffee the following day they got so excited that I felt like I was going to my first day of kindergarten. Gabriel lent be a basket to use for picking and fashioned a belt to keep the basket around my waist. Flor packed me a lunch both days and then fed me extra for dinner after my labor.

I have to admit it, I am tired. Picking coffee is not as physically difficult as some things, say hauling hod or roofing, but it does take its toll.

At the end of today when my boss gave me my 2,000 colones, I felt like I sure as hell had earned it. And to celebrate, I bought a pair of rubber work boots for 2500 colones at the local cooperativa. Now I am ready for more picking. My next destination I think will either be to learn how to chop cane or to learn how to pick oranges. Working in the economies that I am studying adds a whole new layer to my understanding.

My thoughts go out to all those on the Gulf Coast. I just started reading the news. It looks terrible. I hope that’s the last of the hurricanes for the season, but I think the season lasts until November, if I am not mistaken. Let’s hope it’s a short season. And let’s hope that New Orleans and other devastated communities are pieced back together as quickly as humanly possible.

Much love from afar,
Lefty

First day on the job

First day on the job
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

A horrible photo of yours truly, but you get the idea. Pick the red ones, leave the green ones be.

Another link in the chain

Another link in the chain
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

After someone like me picks coffee, it gets bagged up in feed sacks and hauled off to a place like this where a buyer receives your crop. Here, our coffee rolls down a shute to a larger coffee company truck. My boss told me that this particular company exports the majority of its coffee. It's the beginning of the season, so the next time my boss goes to sell his coffee (in 17 days) it will probably be busier. In two months I am told that the countryside is hard to traverse for all the coffee that's getting transported to and fro.

Let' s hear it for local ownership!

Alrighty, I have just read that there may well be a referendum on local ownership of water in Lexington. (This of course if our fair, just, and ever-so-ethical friends at Kentucky American and Mike Scanlon can't wrangle a positive appeal from higher courts). If I may offer a few comments.

First, would someone in the p.r. department on my side (the local ownership side) please find some way to drop "condemnation" from the p.r. materials. Who in the world supports condemnation of anything, save satan and chicken pocks?

Second, would someone please volunteer your time to go door to door to explain to residents why local ownership makes sense and why it is not in a person's best interest to allow a multinational, profit driven corporation run your water supply? I will not be there for the battle unfortunately.

Third, if you live in Lexington, vote in support of local ownership.

I live in a community where, if there is a problem with water, local people have the ability to fix it. They simply take their tools to the problem, and repair the problem. It's amazing and effective. Just a thought.

Love,
Lefty

Frijoles Rojos

Frijoles Rojos
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

The big pile of organic matter behind the little boy in the blue shirt are the beans we harvested off a steep hillside yesterday (see entry below). The man in the hat with the sticks is "beating" the beans. I thought you all might like to see just what I was talking about.

Full of Beans, Literally

Full of Beans, Literally
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

Yesterday I went with some neighbors to a plot of land where they had planted red beans. The beans had already been pulled up and left to dry on the stalk. We just had to consolidate them all into one big pile so that someone could beat the living tarnation out of the stalks in order to get the semi-dried beans to fall out of their pods. It was quick but taxing work, as you can probably tell from the sweat on my brow. Part of the difficulty was the steepness of the grade of the hill upon which the beans were planted. From yesterday’s work we garnered more than 50 kilos of red beans. The family already had about 50 other kilos harvested. My neighbor told me that she uses about 30-40 kilos per year, so she will gift some to her mom, sell some (although prices are lousy), and keep some to plant next year.

While I was over there talking beans this morning, Shakira’s latest song, which is all the rage here in Costa Rica, was blaring in the background. A great juxtaposition to the conversation about beans. Many times we think of people who still grow all their own beans for a year as being antiquated relics of the past, but the family I assisted yesterday, speaks to the contrary. She is a young woman who also cuts hair in this community. She wears trendy clothes and uses Avon products. But she also knows a heck of a lot about beans. In the house next door, her sister’s husband works as a detective for the judicial branch, her sister sells trendy clothes in neighboring pueblos, but they also have a 50 kilo bag of maize that they grew on their land underneath the kitchen sink in their very modern kitchen. Just something for you all to chew on I suppose.

A great place for a fair

A great place for a fair
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

I failed to mention, that Sunday, the day before I made my pilgrimage, I went to a celebration of the Patron Saint of the Canton of Acosta, San Ignacio de Loyola. I had no idea when I woke up Sunday morning that I would be headed off to the festivities, but one of my neighbors invited me to come along in the car of her daughter. It turned out to be a really nice day. Sunny and breezy- perfect celebratory weather. In addition to the festival I also paid a visit to my friend Cecilia, who made sure to show me the butterflies that were laying eggs on one of her vines. So, the day was full of colorful, beautiful photos some of which I thought you might like to see. So, of course, you can figure out which one is the butterfly shot. The kid with the cotton candy is one of my neighbors who is a connoisseur of anything with an enormous amount of sugar in it. The procession on the road is a procession I later joined (when it caught up with me) on it’s way to mass in the church in San Ignacio. The photo of the fair rides was taken right outside the church. Here, during the celebration of the patron saint, they set up rides not unlike county fairs. I was around for this event that last time I lived here, but was basically bed ridden throughout the majority of the festivities. It was also rainy that year, so it just did not feel the same as it did on this particular day. The festivities continue next weekend, when a gazillion horses will be in town strutting their stuff. I will try to shoot some photos your way for your enjoyment. I am missing everyone a lot today. I hope you all are well!

Beautiful weather for a procession

Beautiful weather for a procession
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

The procession to mass with representatives from all the little pueblos of Acosta

I have never seen this before

I have never seen this before
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

The egg-laying butterfly on Cecilia's front porch

Cotton Candy Bliss

Cotton Candy Bliss
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage 017
Originally uploaded by ancho and lefty.

This morning began at 4:30 a.m. I made plans to walk to the Basilica in Cartago as part of the celebration of Costa Rica’s patrona, The Virgin of Los Angeles. She is also known as “La Negrita”- that is because she is little (hence ita) and black (hence negra). Anyhow, I made plans to go with three sisters who are my neighbors here in the country. We also met up with one of the sisters’ husbands who had started his trek at 2 a.m. from our pueblo. I am not sure how far we walked- somewhere between 15-18 miles, according to my estimation. It was a beautiful day. There was not much sun, although I somehow wound up sunburned, and the long walk felt great. As of this evening, I can only report some mild shin pain, probably due to the fact that I wore a pair of old tennis shoes.
When we all arrived at the Basilica, Rosivel, Leidi, and I went into the Basilica to see the statue of The Virgin, but apparently she had been taken outside for a Mass that was going on when we arrived. So, we saw the Basilica, and then got in line for the holy water that is dispensed from a row of several spickets, elegantly placed in a rock wall garden. There were masses of people lined up to fill up coke bottles, squirt bottles, whatever, with holy water. I bought five bottles in the shape of the Virgin of Los Angeles and filled them up to hopefully bring a few home to people who dig holy water and the Virgin. Rosivel told me, “You should drink some of this water from the spicket, it is good for your health.” And so, the photo you see either above or below this entry is yours truly getting a great big heaping dose of Virgin Mojo, which I figure can only help. Maybe The Virgin of Los Angeles can help prevent those nasty bronchial infections I get each winter. We will see.
When we got picked up by the brother of the three sisters at around 2 p.m., we drove back the same way we walked. It was hard to believe how far we had come. We started walking at about 6:30 and finished up at about noon. We walked fast. The road from where we started (Desamparados) to where we finished (Cartago) is flatter and more giving than what I am used to walking here, so Rosivel and I were making fast time. A few times we had to stop and wait for the other folks. Rosivel and I had a blast- walking fast, sometimes jogging, and other times dancing to music that was coming out of vendors’ makeshift tents set up along the pilgrimage route.
Now, of course, I could not help but think of Canterbury Tales when I was on my pilgrimage, and that probably has something to do with Mrs. Carter and my mother, both English instructors. I thought about the similarities (people hawking their wares, food, and religious icons, people struggling to keep going, people hoping for salvation) and the differences (Bob Marley’s music emanating from some vendors’ stalls, the midriff-revealing, spandex one-shoulder shirt for women, the hi-tech cross-training shoe) and so for a moment I felt a connection with my contemporary pilgrims and those of the past. It was a really great day and an experience here I will not forget.