A cuppa coffee

My relationship with coffee is an intense one. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but hear me out. I won’t forget the first time I got a coffee high. In typical eager nerdyness, I had not only been elected Treasurer of Colere, but I also decided to re-organize the binder of Treasurer information into something coherent. Due to its availability of caffeine, I elected to use the WC as the staging area for this endeavor. Once I lost count of how many cups I’d imbibed, I was giddy, singing, and using the CWC hole punch with extraordinary fervor.

I know, bizarre-o.

During my semester in Nicaragua, I spent three weeks in a village whose main industry was coffee farming. Who knows how many hours I spent with my host family, picking each bean individually. The bean is embedded in the fruit of the coffee berry, meaning that after the coffee has been picked, it needs to be de-pulped. My host family used a hand-propelled depulper, which looked like a circular cheese grater that removed the outer fruit layer so that none remained on the bean.

Then the day’s harvest ferments overnight to loosen up the outer husk of the bean. The following day, all the beans are washed, and the de-pulped, de-husked beans are set out to dry. Family members will spend hours over the drying trays, picking out every bug bitten, green, or rotten bean they find. Then they sell their crop at a fraction of the price we pay, and arrives to us pre-roasted and pre-ground, contained in a tasteful WC mug.

I don't ask that anyone feel bad, guilty, whatever. What I want to be recognized is that real people have picked every individual bean, and that these beans go through a lot to arrive in our cup. One of the faults of an industrial society is that we rarely know much about the origins of our purchases. It's not like writing a paper, where the writer is painfully aware of its inception and tortuous revisions. This is more like reading a Hemingway novel.


- Johanna