Adventure Stories: Your Cup of Coffee

We sit in our coffee shops absorbing the ambiance and cradling that cup of liquid gold in our hands. We might have decided to purchase only Fair Trade or organic. We might also have heard that working in coffee plantations is hard work in difficult environments.

It was raining and cold. But even so, half the group went up into the hills, some with primitive looking axes and machetes -- a four kilometre walk in the rain to get to the plantations high in the hills above the road. The plantation owners wanted to send me too. I smiled and said, "No. I'm not prepared for this kind of work today."

So, instead I joined the other half of the group in the warmth of the room for the selecting, grading, hulling, roasting and bagging of the coffee cherries as they are called. In the photos we are removing poorly developed coffee cherries from the rest. It's a tedious time consuming process in the beginning. The experienced are very fast at it.

The plantation we visited is organic and the hills where the coffee cherries are grown are very steep. Working in the heat of summer must be unbearable and in the rain as today, very muddy. I wonder if the students knew what they were getting into when they came to Honduras.

When the kids returned from their 8 kilometre round trip adventure they had cleared the earth around many coffee plants and fertilized each with a combination of the coffee hulls, cow dung, limestone and molasses -- a huge help for the owners who live a hard scabble life in shacks without running water or any amenities.

The coffee husk is removed in the machine. Sometimes the process is repeated.Then the cherries are roasted, weighed and bagged.

cutting the banana tree

As I was walking up the hill to my family's home, I saw a number of people looking down a steep hill. There was a guy down below with a machete standing next to a banana tree. The people had asked him to fetch the bananas.