STUCK-UP STARBUCKS

EDINBURG, TEXAS: MARCH 15
I ask directions to Edinburgh town center. Edinburg doesn't have a center. Edinburgh has Malls. Drive enough miles in any direction and you are in the next town which is also Malls. I ride 7 Ks to a Starbucks. Starbucks considers itself superior. So do its staff. I need black coffee. I am faced with an incomprehensible menu. Bewilderment merits a sneer and half an inch of black liquid in a ceramic cup. WiFi Internet connection is an extra.
A woman whispers to me that Internet is free at MoonBean. MoonBean is on the next block in a neighboring Mall. Staff are friendly and relaxed. Coffee comes in a beaker. Customers talk to me. I am happy.

FAIR TRADE AND STARBUCKS

TAPACHULA, MEXICO: FEBRUARY 16
I drink Corona larger while attempting to close my ears to the Mexican weep-music emanating from the plaza. My companion is the leader of Oaxaca's association of small coffee producers. So many people make fortunes from coffee. My companion instances Nescafe and Starbucks.
He asks why must small farmers starve.
I don't have an answer.
Fair Trade?
Trade is seldom fair.
At finca Los Andes, I learned Starbucks' regulations.
No small grower could afford a fraction of Jim Hazard's investment in eco-purity.
Even gaining an organic lable demands frequent inspections and is beyond the individual grower's purse. Nor is a cooperative practical. Growers distrust each other. Inevitably one or other would use fertilizers. The cooperative would lose its certification.
I listen and sip my beer and hide my skepticism as to an alternative of artesaneria made from coffee prunings,

PAIN OF PARTING

biker and moll


FINCA LOS ANDES: FEBRUARY 16
More farewells, more pain of parting. Olga tells me that I am family: that I must return. Jim has honoured me by sharing his passions (and his worms). And I am joyful. What if? no longer occupies even the smallest corner of my head. To the contrary. Now there is a Thank God.
Thank God that Jim and Olga have Los Andes. No member of my family, certainly not I, could have achieved what Jim has achieved. Here, in a land ripped apart by a vicious internal war, he has created a place of hope and laughter and a shared pride in achievement.
Yet, as I ride slowly and carefully down the cobbled lane, I wonder that no one of Mark's five children wanted to make this their home, wanted to inherit their father's achievement and take it further.
As for me, Mark and Helen crocheted a rug together in the evenings at Los Andes. It is the one possession of theirs that I long to possess.

FREAK WIND AND TEARS

wood stove and good cook


FINCA LOS ANDES: FEBRUARY 16
I will leave before lunch. Jim drives me uphill in the early morning. He planted Cyprus on one slope. Last year a freak gale felled every tree and blasted on down a narrow gorge to strike a planting of macademia nuts.
Jim shows me the trees spilled as if they were spillikins: Yes, he had wanted to weep.
We head back to the house for breakfast.
Children play football on the field below the school.
A woman tells Jim that the coffee harvest is complete.

A DISTASTEFULL ROLL

better of house


FINCA LOS ANDES: FEBRUARY 16
The house at Finca Los Andes is comfortable. I lie in bed and wonder. I wonder that I brought the tea seed out of Kenya.
I had my instructions as to what I should say were the Customs to stop me at Heathrow. Except to the seed, Heathrow was never the danger point. At most, British Customs woud have confiscated it.
Kenya was critical. In Kenya I was committing a crime.
What would my uncle have done had I been arrested?
The seed was important to him – hence the arrangements in London. My safety was a minor side issue.
Not a pleasant thought...
And I recall another time when my uncle used me. It was a more distasteful roll.
My uncle knew that I would never refuse what he asked.
That was our relationship.
He has been dead nearly thirty years.

STARBUCKS AND WORMS

FINCA LOS ANDES: FEBRUARY 15
The tea picked on Los Andes is certified organic. Coffee is sold to Starbucks. Starbucks insist on eco-production. In my uncle's day, water flowed through the coffee factory, washed the beans and flowed back to the stream. Now water is used again and again before being held in tanks where the sediment settles. The sediment is spread in long shaded trays and covered in black plastic. Worms are introduced into the sediment. Juice from the trays is a natural fungicide; the sediment becomes a powerful natural fertilizer.
Infected by Jim's enthusiasm, I dig my fingers into the sediment to sample density of worm population.