Nicaragua

“Please tell me about your profession.”
“How is the weather now?”
“Why do you not have any children?”

With light coming only from the gleam of a well-worn lantern and a sky set ablaze by a preternatural canopy of stars, I find myself answering questions about the particularities of my life in Canada and learning about the ins and outs of coffee farming with my host, Juan Acuña. As we talk into the wee hours in his modest adobe house while a hard rain turns its outer edges to mud, it’s clear that the sweat and blood of this slight, congenial, 58-year-old man has been poured into a 17-acre farm nestled in Nicaragua’s northern hills. With his red cap casting a half-moon shadow on his life-hardened face, he assures me that the only things keeping him busier than producing specialty coffee are his nine children and “lots of grandkids.”

Acuña is among a growing number of Nicaraguan coffee farmers located in the verdant mountains surrounding the northern frontier town of Matagalpa who are affiliated with The Organization of Northern Coffee Cooperatives, or CECOCAFEN, in order to obtain a higher price (a fairer price, in proper parlance) for their coffee. CECOCAFEN represents 2,075 small-scale farmers, helping them locate buyers for some seven million pounds of coffee each year.

“We are a business-oriented organization that seeks out better market conditions for our members,” says Felicity Butler, a British-born co-coordinator of the rural and community-based tourism project at CECOCAFEN. On what I have been promised is an atypically damp and dreary January morning, she is sitting with me at the modest CECOCAFEN headquarters in Matagalpa, schooling me on the social, economic and environmental benefits of fair trade for its 11 member cooperatives. I’m grateful for her English-speaking upbringing, as much of my time with the locals in Central America’s largest country has been spent wishing I hadn’t skipped out on Spanish lessons in favor of YouTube.

This morning’s agenda also includes the scoop on what I should expect in the next several days as I embark on a home-stay project with the farmers and their families. It’s part of CECOCAFEN’s program dubbed “agro ecotourism,” which Butler claims will put me in direct contact with the faces, voices and culture of the denizens who conceive my coffee. She sets her eyes on me and says brightly, “You’re in for first-class hospitality.”

A dilapidated mountain road leads to La Carona, a community set among romantic views of flourishing coffee-draped mountains leaping skyward. The bus, filled with a dozen or so boisterous students from Massachusetts’ Bridgewater State College, is guided by James Hayes-Bohanan, a burly, bearded, mild-mannered geography professor who, for the last couple of Januarys, has brought students to Nicaragua’s northern fringes to learn about the positive impacts of fair trade. “They may not know it now, but by the end of this trip these guys will have a much greater appreciation for where their morning cup o’ joe comes from,” yelps Hayes-Bohanan as a drop into a doozy of a pothole sends our noodles disturbingly close to the roof.

Happy to have two feet firmly on the ground, my first impression of La Carona is that it is a hodgepodge of activity. Wide-eyed kids scamper about, a group of women busily prepare our midday repast, and in the background a stalwart man stands atop a hill, manually de-pulping freshly harvested coffee cherries. The unsullied air has become malodorous with their aroma. As I snap a few photos of the seasoned farmer and his tanned and dignified cowboy hat, it’s clear he is embarrassed to be the subject of my fuss.

But there’s little time for photography as community guide Alfredo Rayo whisks us into the coffee fields. A 20-something, svelte Nicaraguan youth, Rayo is among a growing number of men in his age group who are being trained to foster tourists’ understanding of organic, fair-trade coffee farming. As rain begins to fall in sheets and biting ants go to war on my feet, an undeterred Rayo carries on, dishing out fascinating facts on the complexities of growing quality coffee in harmony with Mother Nature.

In the wet hour or so I spend with Rayo, I learn that for many of the cooperatives located in La Carona, growing coffee means time-consuming pruning and weeding with machetes, taking advantage of pulp as a natural fertilizer, ensuring ethical working conditions, and practicing agriculture without chemical inputs—things coffee professionals know but of which the average consumer is only vaguely aware. “This used to be a baseball field,” Rayo says as he pulls down a branch to show the students a blushed cherry that’s ready to be picked. Such a statement would not arouse such “oohs” and “aahs” if not for the fact that we are standing under a grand canopy of native shade-giving trees.

Large-scale coffee farming in Nicaragua is directly tied to German immigration, spurred on by 19th-century Nicaraguan governments that offered foreign-interest-free land in exchange for planting coffee trees. Today, much of the coffee produced in the fertile mounds surrounding the Jinotega and Matagalpa regions is among the best in the world. Employing strict agricultural practices in combination with the damp weather and an altitude above 3,000 feet, these regions turn out bigger cherries at a balanced maturation rate. CECOCAFEN cooperatives are consistently among the finalists at international cupping events such as the Cup of Excellence. In fact, CECOCAFEN was the first co-op in Nicaragua certified in all of the components of the ISO 9001 2000 system. Maintained by the International Organization for Standardization, ISO recognition ensures that strict production procedures are followed in order to achieve a certain degree of customer satisfaction.

“Our coffee is smooth and less acidic than most,” says Javier Galo, a former Sandinista operative turned tourism coordinator for coffee farmers. At least that’s what I think I hear while I am perched on the back of his booming dirt bike as he hollers praise for his members’ products. Under a tepid sun and a sky dotted with billowing clouds, we weave left and right on a broken road on our way to the aptly named Solcafe—a dry mill on the outskirts of Matagalpa.

In the late 1990s, as a quality-control measure and a means to give farmers more clout in the coffee supply chain, CECOCAFEN purchased Solcafe. It’s here where beans are dried, the parchment is removed and they are packaged for shipment to worldly locales. “Ninety-nine percent of the coffee beans that leave this plant are free of defects,” says a proud Galo—to me and the assemblage from Massachusetts—as we stand on the concrete amongst the abundantly spread out, square collections of beans, their moisture dissipating by the minute under the high-noon sun.

Listening to Galo exalt Solcafe’s assets—such as the fact its energy is being generated from solar power, that it provides some 170 men and women with well-compensated employment, or that it has more certifications than other coffee processing plants—is fascinating. However, what really tickles my fancy are the women outfitted in brilliant yellow uniforms under the glow of fluorescence, picking out the few inferior beans as they whiz by on conveyor belts. As part of the tourist experience, we are encouraged to join them in ensuring that only the finest coffee ends up in mugs around the globe.

In the cupping lab, Marcades, a fetching professional coffee taster, demonstrates the techniques used by roasters and roaster-retailers to sample several different coffees in order to pick those that capture the sapid elements they prefer. “Lean over, slurp it up, swirl around and then spit it out,” she says through an interpreter. After several rounds of this, my mouth is in desperate need of a Listerine bath. Sampling coffee as an avocation is serious business. I learn that tasters like Marcades must adhere to certain dietary constraints and abstain from smoking in order to keep their taste buds in fine form. I ponder what their palates would think of the instant stuff my brother guzzles in generous quantities.

Fair trade delivers many social, economic and environmental benefits to coffee farmers, but it nonetheless falls short of helping families meet all their financial commitments. Furthermore, almost all the coffee produced by CECOCAFEN cooperatives meets fair-trade criteria, but the absence of world demand means that only 30 percent of it can be sold with the logo at a premium price. Because of this reality, the farmers and their families formed four fair-trade communities in 2003 to diversifying their incomes: La Corona, El Roblar, La Pita and La Reyna. These groups within the San Ramon municipality are turning to small-scale, community-based, agricultural ecotourism to generate much-needed income.

With government support gone AWOL, the communities are looking to use income from agro ecotourism and low-interest loans provided by CECOCAFEN to maintain and build roads, invest in environmentally sustainable technologies, educate their children, and provide health care. In the true spirit of community, a percentage of all tourist fees are deposited in a fund to finance development projects and to ensure that the project benefits the entire area, not just a few families. But, it seems to me the ultimate crux behind guiding bipedal tourists like me is that I will become aware and convey to people in my country how hard people work to produce their coffee. My opinion? They work too hard.

Taking part in this project is more than learning about the advantages of fair trade. Visitors can expect to participate in the creation of local foods like nacatamales (a scrumptious meat and potato mixture wrapped in a banana leaf), be entertained by traditional dance and song, play soccer and baseball with rambunctious children, and tramp along lush trails to plunging waterfalls and copious mountain views like the one found high above the El Roblar community.

“Cuantos anos tienes?” “Soy doce.” Learning Francisco’s age is about all the conversation I can muster as this young lad with almost maddening boyish stamina leads me up a path with several abrupt inclines to what is promised to be a grand panorama of the BOSAWAS Natural Reserve—the largest land preservation initiative in Central America.

The wet January has turned coffee fields and trails such as this one in El Roblar into a mess of muddy goo. On more than one occasion, I end up on my backside glaring up at an amused Francisco—an outcome that wouldn’t be so embarrassing were it not for the farmers running by with 100-pound sacks of coffee on their shoulders as if the ground were as dry as rattlesnake skin.

A dirty mess, we crest the hill, and I’m awarded a front-row seat to a vista of blooming, fecund slopes and fields awash in beans, yucca and coffee. Sapped, I stand agape at the splendor. Apparently indefatigable, Maria Rizo, president of El Roblar’s Privilegio cooperative, zips by to take her place under a gazebo to begin a presentation on the accomplishments of the co-op. With 27 members, Privilegio is the only all-female cooperative associated with CECOCAFEN.

Despite some rumblings from a small few of the opposite sex, these women have been able to generate cash crops and participate heavily in social programs that prevent physical abuse, bring potable water to the community and enable women to commence small business ventures. “We are very happy to have the support of our husbands and CECOCAFEN,” says Rizo as the sun sneaks out from behind a cloud to set her face aglow.

It’s the bonds between these families and farmers that allow them to solidify ownership of their land. Group strength, access to low-interest loans and additional funds achieved through fair trade and tourism mean they are less likely to have to sell off their fields and migrate to cities to find work.

Perhaps no community has embraced tourism more than La Pita. With 15 coffee growing members, they have invested heavily in meeting the wants and needs of visitors, including building comfortable guest rooms and providing more than adequate amounts of culinary delights that often leave this tourist slavering for more. However, the beauty of the surrounding landscape is enough encouragement that anyone should need to make the trip.

“I don’t even know all the animals that are up there,” says Sergio Garcia Diaz, coordinator of the ecotourism project for La Pita, addressing a delegation of students from Kentucky’s Centre University. Diaz’s harmless unfamiliarity is directed toward the fauna in the sylvan slopes surrounding the community.

Within moments of tramping up the inclines to shade-covered coffee, we bear witness to such biodiversity as groups of green parrots and other feathered flyers—multi-colored like rainbow sherbet—exchanging perches overhead, while elusive howler monkeys fill the air with haunting vocals. Their distinctive bellows, especially when echoing in the predawn light, can be quite frightening for newcomers. But today their racket is drowned out by a man draped in a black rain tarp filling his bronzed cheeks with the untarnished air and then setting it free into a conch shell. His sole purpose is to inform workers where there are coffee cherries to be picked. I find this simple form of communication utterly fantastic.

Visit fairtradecoffeetour.com for information in Spanish on coffee farm tours in Nicaragua. Information in English can be obtained by phone or e-mail. Phone numbers and addresses are listed on the site.

“Don’t tear off the stem or no bean will grow there next year,” we are told by one of the guides as she instructs us on the proper way to gather mature cherries. And so for the next hour or so, as the mercury sneaks upwards, a sweaty bunch of gringos attempt to fill baskets tied snugly around our bellies. It’s humbling work. A modicum two buckets of cherries is all a group of 25 manages to collect. Our payoff? 36 Cordobas, or about two American dollars, according to Diaz. “Geez, I can’t even buy a latte at Starbucks for that,” sighs a female student in the background.

Back at lower altitudes, my host, Tomasa, a shy, 20-something farmer with a prominent silver front tooth, rustles up a plate of locally grown organic kidney beans, squash, salty cheese (cuajada) and a hot-off-the-oven corn tortilla. Perfect comestibles after a day of muddy hiking, picking coffee and joining the local youths kicking up tawny dust playing the “beautiful game” between two sets of bamboo nets surrounded by virgin forest.

Joined by her husband, Vicente, and their son, Selvin, who can’t be pried away from a handheld video game likely donated by a previous guest, the evening quickly passes as we huddle in a small room chatting about Nicaragua’s complex political history. On a television with surprisingly excellent reception, Jean-Claude Van Damme is kicking around some poor gent. I am relieved that Tomasa is more interested in the pictures I have brought of loved ones back home than Jean-Claude’s ripped mid-section.

In broken Spanish, I ask her what she likes most about living in this community. Answering my inquiry in equally fragmented English, she simply states, “Happy place.” It’s then, as I move out to the porch to watch the satellites wink across a star-filled sky, that I realize opening my wallet to farmers like Vicente and Tomasa by visiting their homes and purchasing their fair-trade coffee back home is money well spent. I want to support these men who have such an unyielding commitment to family, the environment and producing a quality product. And as I retire for the night, I keep my fingers crossed that I won’t be awakened by the pre-dawn cacophony of the roosters.

MORE ECOTOURISM COMING YOUR WAY, VIA VIAMIGO.COM

Need a guide to scuba diving in the Christmas Islands? How about the diamond district in Antwerp? Or the lingerie shops of New York City? Or, more apropos, the coffee farms of Guatemala? VIAmigo.com is the way to go local. Everything’s game, from kayaking to nightlife to ancient ruins.

Set to launch this month, VIAmigo.com is the global-adventure directory brainchild of Jeffrey Goldsmith, formerly of Café Haiku fame.

Simply put, VIAmigo.com is a place where you can find off-the-beaten-path tour guides or even list yourself as a local expert to travelers. If you know the cafés of Vienna, the tea plantations of Hangzhou or the roasters of Seattle, you can create your own tours and take travelers on caffeinated adventures. Some charge for this service, some do not.

Currently free, the site will include added value services in the near future. Check it out, tell your friends and help make the world a smaller, nicer place—because somos todos amigos.

Comments on this article may be sent to comments@freshcup.com.

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