Cupping Coffee

Many people have asked me about working with coffee growers in the DR and about coffee quality. I think the zeitgeist of the US is just breaching the existing body of knowledge surrounding how coffee is grown, processed, roasted and measured for quality. I'm continually amazed at the personalities of the growers and the personalities of their farms. To that end, this post is about a recent visit to Julia Alvarez's research farm in Los Dajaos.

Our trainer, Tim Keifer, set up a training day on the farm for the 3-month in-service training (IST) for the environment volunteers who arrived in March 08. There are about 15 of them, and since Ben and I live in Jarabacoa and work in coffee, we were invited to participate in the training. Ben wrote a short training on techniques for simple financial analysis on drying tunnel construction. I was really excited to go and get more involved in coffee plant nursery stuff - germination, greenhouse transfer, in-ground transfer, pruning.

When Ben and I return from Our Big Miami Trip 2008, we're moving to Los Dajaos, a coffee community up the mountain from Jarabacoa and La Yautia (where we live now). The reasons are tri-fold: my primary project with Junta Yaque never emerged, ASCAJA (Ben's primary) is building a water treatment plant for washing coffee, and they'll be needing some assistance organizing the administration there. Lastly, Ben and I would like to try out a more rural location where we'll encounter (here's hoping) a stronger community vibe.

A doctor names Xiomara lives in Los Dajaos. She's young and interested in community health. I think we'll be able to work together on delivering a series of talks on reproduction education. I'm hoping for the opportunity to work on prenatal and toddler nutrition.
After the training on coffee trees, from germination to transplanting, the CoDoCafe people put on a 'cupping.' This is how toasted coffee is finally graded for aroma of the bean, aroma in the cup, and taste.

First, the three coffees to be graded were not labeled with their established qualities. Two were award winners and one was tria, (really low quality junkie coffee). We went around smelling the ground coffee.

Second, boiling water was poured into the grounds and the coffee was allowed to brew a bit. The next step was to really get your nose in there and inhale the brew's aroma.

Third, after the coffee cooled a minute, we each sipped, swished, and spit. You try and get each coffee all over your mouth to receive info on all parts of the tongue.

There are some more technical details, but that's the gist of the cupping experience. Its amazing how different all three coffees were when placed in comparison like so. The most important thing is to prepare all three exactly the same way. For professional cuppings, they usually toast a small amount on the spot for the event, but I would recommend that anyone who wants to have a little fun try it at home with their favorite coffees.

Girls Leading Our World aka Camp GLOW

This post is overdue. Camp GLOW took place in July, but its just now after months of travel that I'm catching up on the summer stories of service to the Dominican Republic. Ben is dancing around to CSS; we gave him a haircut on the front porch this morning. There's some tropical storm overhead, raining and pouring on and on. The beans are boiling in the pressure cooker; their sizzling stream gives the air a warm humidity to combat the cold muddy rain smell outside. The cold rain smell is fine from inside the concrete house. But when I have to walk in it, the smell just reminds me of how muddy I'm getting and the cold perspiration soaking my bra and my blouse.

Things are happy. We returned from la gloria yesterday, and our plane rides were uneventful except in that they were so short - an hour to Puerto Rico and an hour to Dominicana. How upsetting to see the DR, in all its fumbling poverty again, and still have the air-conditioned air of Miami all over me. Our flight left Ft. Lauderdale at 6 AM, and we were cozy in our house in Jarabacoa by 5 o'clock that afternoon. It's Tuesday, and Ben I have to move to Los Dajaos by Friday. I'm still not sure how we are going to swing it, logistically.
As for Camp GLOW, its a summer sleep-away camp some Peace Corps countries put together for the female teens. I worked on the finance committee, and helped out a bit with the tee shirts and the bonding activity. I had a really good time at camp, although it was the most stressful PC week since training. I was in such close proximity with my fellow PCV's, which is like putting as many pressure cookers at pressure together on a fire. I felt more comfortable with the other PCV's than I ever had before, so they got a more base version of my personality. Um, I'm not sure that it made me any friends, but there we have it.

The girls had a great time, though, and that's what counts.

I saw so much growth and opportunity in their eyes as the campers had the chance to express themselves in freedom, freedom from their parents and freedom from men. Dominicana has a more structured and prescribed gender hierarchy than the middle and upper class American culture does. Being around us nutso PCV's is interesting for them - seeing female PCV's use power tools and go about childless; seeing male PCV's sweep up and the like.

But at camp, they get to step outside those barriers as well. First off, there's a pool. These girls are not shy about wearing their cute bathing suits, but its just awesome to see them start games and start racing each other, shamelessly competitive.

The girls made dream catchers to symbolize their ability to make goals and plan to attain them. I felt the young audience's wan desire make for strong commitment when the panel of professional Dominicanas spoke about their careers as doctors and newscasters. In my everyday experiences in La Yautia its troubling to see how little in the way of opportunity these girls have, but at camp its livening to feel a part of what positive support there is for them.

I wish I had carved out quality time with the two girls I brought, Yasmín and Yohida (pronounced 'jo-high-dah'). I ended up teaching yoga, leading a pillow talk round table, and then doing some miscellany during each day's free time. I didn't come away from camp knowing them too much better, and I wish I had. Still, it may be for the best this way as the move this month will make working with the two of them impossible.

I thought camp was run extremely well; it was a pleasure to work with such a sure-footed planning team. Still, I left the week feeling over-taxed. Perhaps next year, Planning will a few PCV's to participate in the camp without bringing girls and schedule PCV's true free time.

On Leave from the Island

August turned into a big surprise month when my mom found great tickets for the whole family to Miami. My mama moved to the States in the 50's from Venezuela, and all 13 kids and my grandparents settled down in Miami. My mom and some of her siblings moved to California in the 70's (along with all the hippies!), and most of my uncles were back and forth to California during their Vietnam deployments. Today, about a quarter of my mom's family lives in California, and the rest live in either Atlanta or south Florida. So what's funny about that is the California people are Democrats who recycle, and the southerners have framed pictures of W., religious art icons, and Walmart!

Now, when I was young, we took family trips driving from Los Angeles, CA to Hollywood, FL. Those were epic journeys where I would read LRH's 10-volume sci-fi series Mission Earth between trips to the Alamo, swimming in KOA pools, and fighting with my brothers and sisters. Some years, we would take short (meaning 2 weeks+) journeys to Mexico, too. These vacations were a month plus, and I was never delivered home in time to attend the first day of school. A trip to Miami hasn't happened since the 80's, so my littlest sister (the Bob) didn't even know all the Miami family until this 2008 Miracle Airfare Trip.

Ben and I getting the Dominican Republic as our Peace Corps assignment: it's weird thinking that I would be geographically closer to half my aunts and uncles than I am usually! Also, getting to know my Caribbean culture, more, too - ironic, poetic justice, idyllic? In California, we mostly have Mexicans like my dad, and assorted latinos from Central America; my mom has generally been a cultural outlier with all her Caribbean habits, like being freakishly loud and the argument conversation style. There's a lot more to be said about that, but back to the vacation.

My moms gets these great, cheap fares on August 1st and by 4 PM that day, I'm booked on a flight out off the island over to Miami on the 9th. I had resigned myself to completing service without a break to the States, and I took this as just another sign that when you live in the DR, what happens is what “Dios quiere” (what God wants). There have been times when I wished for home pretty bad, and part of my struggle with my service is homesickness. For the most part, the stories of my companions center on angst or disappointment with Dominicana as a country or its nationals, and project troubles.

I concur that the culture clash is tiresome and draining, and the fate of one's project is a strain on the heart muscle. But my personal struggle is homesickness - homesickness for family, art supplies, textile arts, theater, food - my people and those activities that are a part of my personality.

Well, Ben and I had concentrated much effort on fortifying me against waves of homesickness, installing storm windows, against the flying coconut in the tormenta of homesickness, and then Dios kicks me a great long trip home. Now, we've been Stateside 13 days with 4 to go, and I am so relaxed.

I think I had forgotten how easy we have in the US. And I remember now some things about American living that I had forgotten in months 3-9 of my service. These things that were apparent in the first three months are now obvious again as the pendulum of experience swings back and I the US and DR at once, feel them at once.

Here in the States, I take these beautiful showers, hop in the pool, watch the Olympics on a flat screen tv, head to the movies, gratuitously enjoy the Internet - revel in beautiful green lawns and draining highways with smooth clean asphalt like a clear complexion. My toes are snuggled in carpet and the leather couch is like a hug, too. Its so much to enjoy! In the afternoons, my dad likes to take us to Barnes and Noble to browse books.

In the DR, life is so different is incomparable. I started off trying to qualify and quantify what it takes to make the DR a safer, healthier place. I'm still manifestly interested in the question, but the scheme of comparison - I'm not sure it exists. I'm happy to be going back, to be able to offer my education to the community we'll be returning to; and still, I will need to invent a method, personally mine, to working within the development model and in the DR.

Finally, I would like to say that this trip has made clear to me where and how my personal growth occurred. I have a little list of accomplishments to make the hard days easier, but this trip was nice in that, much like the visit from the Berry's in July, I saw those personality changes I had as goals when I left back in September 07.