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Yesterday I finally got to do something really, really cool. Ok, really cool if you´re a geek about coffee like me…. Anyway, yesterday afternoon we went to the processing plant where the coffee arrives from the farms. Here it is dried, washed, sorted and bagged by various machines and people. It was really amazing to see first hand what happens with the coffee before it gets delivered all around the world. When I saw the burlap bags of coffee with the Cafe Femenino symbol it was almost surreal, since I see those bags every day at work. All of the community leaders that have been participating in meetings were there as well and quite excited that I was there. I think they took more pictures of me than they did of the plant! After we toured the facilities we went into a room and had a coffee tasting session. I was surprised to find out that many of the community leaders had never participated in something like this before, despite the fact that they had been growing coffee all of their lives. My next surprise was to find out that I would be teaching them how to do it! We used to do coffee tasting sessions at Planet Bean quite often and I was lucky enough to have our roaster, Dave, teach me the process. Still, I am far from an expert at it! Nevertheless, I seemed to impress everyone with my slurping and spitting skills.

Today I did another interview and this will likely be the last of those for the community leaders since meetings end today and they will all being going back to their communities tonight or tomorrow. I think that the interviews went well, although I wish that I was able to do a few more.

Tonight I´m getting on a bus for 10 hours and heading for the jungle to visit a community where coffee is grown. I am hoping to conduct as many interviews as possible during my time there. I´m not looking forward to the 10 hour trip, but I´m sure that once I am there it will be worth it. These are the most important interviews for my project and what I have been working towards for so long.

So wish me luck on my weekend in the jungle. I´m sure I will have lots to update on when I get back!

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