Living in the Campo

  I have been extremely  busy for the past two weeks. I spent a week in a small rural community in San Ramon called La Pita. During my stay I had the opportunity to interact with my campo family and learn about the cultivation of coffee. At the house where I was staying there was a little boy name Edwin who became my guide throughout my stay in El Campo. His father, Apolonio Mercado, took me to his coffee parcel and showed me how to pick coffee grains from the trees. This a very easy but tedious process.  I struggled to stand still while I was picking coffee grain because all of the trees were in a slope and the the ground was very muddy due to the rain of the winter season.
    I would have to wake up between 5:00  and 6:00 in the morning during my stay in el campo. I would be served breakfast which consisted of rice,beans,tortilla, and cafe con leche and after head out to the yard and take car of the  pelegueyes or "lambs". In one occassion I had the chance to help my friend Sara Jacobs to put organic fertilizer on her family's coffee trees.
   One thing that I will never forget about the campo is its natural landscape. The area has an abundance of trees and vegetation. All of the hills and mountains are full with green grass and bushes. The river in La Pita is amazing, it is crystal clear and there is no evidence of anthropogenic  influence in the content of the water.
But the most beautiful scene that I got to witness were the cows freely  grazing on the green grass in fields and hills  of La Pita under the afternoon sun. In my life I would never imagine myself in such a wonderful place. This scenery gave me hope that paradise does exist in the world but this paradise exists in the midst of impoverish people.
  During the coffee season the campesinos are working in the fields from  5:00 am to 3:00 pm. Not only do they have to be attentive to their fields but also to their animals. Also they must do miscellaneous work such as cut wood for the stove, prepare the maize, and maintain the yard of the house.
  The processes that are required to produced the coffee are all done manually. After the grain is picked , the seed must be separated from the grain. This is done with a tool  that requires two people; one to hold the bag to get the seed as they fall after they have been separated from the grain and the other to drop the grains into the seperator. After, the seeds are put out to dry over night and the following day shell must be broken from the seed. When this is done the coffee is then roasted on a pan for an hour using the heat of  the stove. Once the coffee is fully roasted it is grinded and ready to be exported.
 Sadly to saw the campesinos work for the harvest of coffee is poorly compensated. The sale for coffee goes for $C4000 for quintal (100 lbs) and the campesino gets 10% of each quintal that s/he produces. The rest of the profits go to the UCA ( Union Coopertiva Agropecuario) which is a government agency that helps sells and export the coffee to developed nations. As Starbuck sells each cup of coffee for $3, the campesino is stuck with the income of less than a thousand dollars a year. This experience overall got me to see the beauty of the harvest of coffee and simultaneously seek out the economic beast that exploits the labor of the campesinos.