If this international law thing doesn't work out, I can always pick coffee

Every day on the way to and from campus, our buses pass through acres and acres of coffee plantations. I always thought they were beautiful, and this past weekend I had the opportunity to actually step inside the leafy green fields to pick some of the coffee myself. Why, you may ask? The idea was to let students experience what it's like to do the work and to interact with the local coffee pickers. It was really an amazing experience.

We showed up at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday, and they loaded us into the back of a wagon that was pulled by a tractor. This is how the workers are transported to and from work every day. (Of course, the regular workers had already been working since 6:00 a.m.; we just got to sleep in a bit.)


Our coffee-picking destination was along the same road we take to school every day. Below is a picture of the portion of the road that "broke" and caused us to be displaced for the first three weeks of class. The original road was actually off to the right of the photo, but there was a bit of a landslide (note all the fresh dirt), so they just created this new road here with gravel and dirt. There's a really steep drop into a canyon off to the right of the photo.


So, I never really thought about how coffee beans grow exactly, but I never would have guessed they look like berries. But guess what? They do. (See below.) We were given instructions to only pick the red berries and to leave the green ones on the plant (I presume they wait for the green ones to ripen, then pick those). Picking them is a very tedious process, since you are supposed to avoid collecting leaves or green berries. No one wears gloves because they make it too clumsy to work with. If you smoosh the berry, you find two white seed/bean things inside that look exactly like peanut halves. Apparently these are then rinsed off, dried, and then I think they actually crack open and the coffee bean is inside them. Then you roast the beans.


Here are my spoils! I only picked for about an hour or two, and I didn't get very far. We pooled all of our collections together, and we were told that we would have earned a TOTAL of about $5. Split between 18 people, that means we each earned about 30 cents for our hour or two of work (but we were a lot slower than the normal workers).


This guy picked a lot more than me...


This guy below is only 16, and he's been coffee-picking since he was 8. Apparently the average worker picks about 6 to 10 of these baskets of coffee every day, which is the equivalent of about $8 to $14. But the faster guys can pick up a few more baskets a day, bringing the earnings, at most, to about $17 a day.


Here are some more workers. Most of them are from Nicaragua and come for seasonal work. The company apparently gives them free housing while they work, and they work 8 hours a day. Around February, when coffee-picking season slows down, they go work in the sugar cane fields.


Both men and women work in the fields, and they often bring their kids with them, either to work or just to hang out with them. There was one 16-year-old girl there working, and this baby below is hers. (I'm not exactly sure who the girl holding the baby is -- I think the 16-year-old's sister or maybe one of the worker's kids.)


And here's just a random shot of the coffee plantation.

So here's my favorite part: Apparently the coffee beans we picked are separated into different grades, and the high-grade beans are exported while the lower-grade beans stay in the country. Guess who this coffee plantation sells its high-grade beans to? Starbucks. Seriously. So the next time you're drinking Starbucks coffee, you may be drinking beans I picked with my own hands!

OK OK, you win

So, you asked for a hair picture. Here ya go. I kind of look like an idiot in this picture even without the hair. Enjoy.

Hairy experience (sorry, i love bad puns)

So, I've been in this country about three months now, and my Spanish is slowly but steadily improving. I still can't understand people if they're just rapidly talking to each other, but I can give directions to taxi drivers and can more or less read cooking instructions on the back of food containers. Yet I've run into a few stumbling blocks. People seem to misunderstand me, even when I think I'm speaking the language.

For example, when I first arrived here, I asked someone if they sold "cafe frio" (cold coffee). I needed my daily coffee fix, but it was really hot out, so I wanted iced coffee -- you know, Dunkin Donuts style. To my happy surprise, the guy said yes and promptly left to go get it. About 10 minutes later, he comes back with this elaborate coffee-milkshake-type of thing with chocolate syrup drizzled around the edge of an ornate glass cup and whip cream on top. Now I'm not saying it wasn't good -- because it was fantastic. But it wasn't exactly what I wanted (and it cost $5 instead of your usual 80-cent cup of coffee).

My next related experience was just about a week or two ago. I was in a bar with friends, and I wanted to order nachos. They had nachos with chicken or nachos with beef on their menu, so I went up to the bartender and pointed to the nachos on the menu but said "nachos sin carne y sin pollo -- vegetariana." Clear enough to me. I wanted nachos but without the beef or the chicken. And he asked "ensalada y fijoles?" So I said yes -- I wanted the salad toppings (lettuce and tomatoes) and beans. I even pointed to the girl next to me who was eating exactly what I was trying to order. A short while later the bartender brings me a huge garden salad with a side of refried beans and a handful of tortilla chips. Now -- again -- it was darn tasty. But it's not what I meant.

The culmination of my language barriers came this past weekend when I went to get my hair cut. I was quite proud of myself because I called the woman Saturday morning and asked to make an appointment for 2:00 that afternoon, and I did it all in Spanish. That part was successful. Then I described how I wanted my hair cut. I made a point of learning the word for layers ahead of time (capas), so I said I wanted capas largo (long layers). Perhaps the woman understood me and simply thought she knew better, but instead of long layers, I got incredibly short layers. My total hair length still goes past my shoulders, but the shortest layer is probably halfway up the back of my head. It's kind of like the Rachel haircut on Friends -- which would be cool if this were 1997. But it's not. Unlike my other experiences, I was not happy with this substitution.

So, I'm thinking I'm just going to let it grow out a bit until I'm home in December and I can explain to someone in my native tongue how to fix my hair. Until then, I'll keep practicing my Spanish.