The End of Farming

We were at Granadilla Silvestre for two weeks, and Alex and I realized that we are most definitely urbanites. The coffee picking life is not for us- it is rough getting up to start work at 6 every morning! Check out the photo- that is us with our fellow WWOOFer Aurora, another Californian. All the coffee pickers wear a canasta (basket) strapped around their waist, which weighs around 35 pounds when full. Every time you fill up your basket you empty it in a large bag that can hold about 4 baskets of coffee beans. Then we get to carry the bags (mine were never full- no way could I carry a bag that weighs more than I do!) back to the road to be taken by truck to the co-op where it is weighed. The other photo is a coffee branch; the red beans are maduro, or ripe, and the green ones have to be left on the plant to ripen for later pickers. Also note the rubber boots we are wearing- indispensable here with all of the mud we constantly trek through. We pretty much wear our botas everywhere since it is still the rainy season here.

Besides us, we almost always picked with Rocio, the jefa (boss) of all the farm work. Rocio works more than any woman I know- all day doing farm work, including picking coffee and carrying the ridiculously heavy bags, and then she goes home in between to cook and clean for her family. She also finds time to help all the WWOOFers with their various needs and teach us how to make tortillas and arroz con leche. I also wrote down her Christmas tamales recipe- in Spanish, for 200 tamales- which I will need to scale down and get some help translating when I try my hand at making them.

We also have been picking coffee with migrant Nicaraguans (“Nicos”), including children as young as five. It is hard watching the kids work alongside of us, especially picking coffee, which is not fun and is hard work. Unfortunately these families need the additional income that comes from the extra coffee their children pick, and there is really no alternative since they cannot afford to pay for childcare during the workweek. One young mother has a one year old whom she carries in her coffee basket. The Nicos stay in Costa Rica for about eight months out of the year, doing various agricultural labor; the return home for only four months.

Luckily, for our last day of work, Alex and I got to be babysitters instead of coffee pickers- a twofold benefit of us not picking coffee and the kids not having to pick either. Not so luckily, we found that watching a group of 14 energetic kids somehow made us more tired than when we picked coffee. It was more fun though; we played a variety of outdoor games (tag, hide and seek, kickball, soccer) and also read, painted, and made jewelry. I think it was a very nice change of pace for kids who spend a lot of time working and not enough time being children.

Besides coffee picking, we also helped with various other tasks including cutting bamboo, gardening, raking, maintaining compost piles and painting. We had a pretty good time at Granadilla Silvestre, and have definitely learned a lot about how other people live. We also got a chance to ride horses while there, and took advantage of a nearby river for some nice cool-down swims in the afternoons.

W are happy to be back in Panama City now, although our bus trip back was a bit of an ordeal. We had to take three buses overall to get back here- the first at 6am from Quizzará (the tiny town where Granadilla Silvestre is located), which is an hour and a half ride to San Isidro, a town on the Interamericana. We had to wait a few hours in San Isidro to take a 10:30am bus to David in Panama, about a 5 hour ride. Then we waited about an hour in David before boarding our 6:30pm bus to Panama City, normally a 6 hour ride. Unfortunately, about 2 hours into the trip to Panama City our bus broke down and we had to sit at the side of the highway for an hour and half to wait for the next bus coming from David. That bus was already partially full so Alex and I didn´t get seats when we boarded. VERY HAPPILY for us, an hour later we stopped in Santiago and enough people got off to allow for all the remaining passengers to sit down for the last three hours to the city. Very unhappily the bus was quite over-air conditioned and we were freezing the entire time- the smart people who had probably taken the bus a number of times had brought flannel blankets with them for the ride. But finally, at 4am we arrived back at our apartment and promptly fell asleep.

We plan to take a Spanish class for most of December to really polish up our skills (although we are both progressing pretty well so far), and then head out to rural Panama to volunteer with an indigenous community, the Ngobe-Bugle. Also during our month in the city we will be working on grad school applications- oh boy! And for all the family worrying about me- now you can call me again to verify my safety.