Each week, we post “The Nod” from Intelligentsia (the coffee roaster who produces the fantastic beans we serve) here on Appendix E-J. It is always a source of coffee knowledge, though this one (written by Intelligentsia’s VP of Coffee Geoff Watts) touches on the philosophy of time and the frustrations towards corrupt governmental systems as well. Hold on to your butts.
Hola:
I’m sitting here at the little café outside the Jomo Kenyatta airport in Nairobi, Kenya. Times like these are the dregs of my work, the most uncomfortable and least enjoyable part of being a coffee buyer. Just waiting and nothing more. Nothing to do and just enough fatigue to sap any will to try to make something of the time. I’ve realized that the act of waiting with nothing on the line, no tension whatsoever, is one of the most frustrating elements of life.
Years ago, when I first started traveling relentlessly, I was able to find pleasure in transit. New airports, new people to observe, and the anticipation of getting somewhere not well-known were enough to make the transit interesting in one way or another. Now those things have worn away from repeated use. I used to take a certain satisfaction and pleasure in explaining to friends that I never, ever got bored. Not once. For almost two decades boredom was a foreign condition. At the very least, there was always something to think about or some sort of meaningless distraction that would allow time to wash by unnoticed. I took pride in that.
I remember fondly the arguments I used to have with Doug Zell (Intelligentsia CEO) about keeping track of time. Ten years ago, in our first Roasting Works on Cortland in Chicago when our production staff consisted of me and a handful of guys packing coffee, I walked in one morning and saw a gigantic clock hanging on the gray cement wall in front of the roaster. I took it down immediately. “What point is there in watching a clock?” I asked. It slows things down, causes one to start measuring time in an unnatural way, giving individual minutes an undeserved importance in the scheme of things. It makes the day feel longer. If I want to know what time it is, I’ll check. There are now clocks on cell phones, watches on arms, clocks on the computer, clocks everywhere. The last thing we need is to have one in our face, staring down at us all day and tempting us to look, almost forcing us to care about the steady progress of the little revolving hands.
A day after I took it down, I entered the office and there it was, back in place. Geez. I decided to hide it this time, so I stuck it behind a pile of coffee sacks where it could tick-tock all day and bother no one, entertaining itself in solitude. That’s when we argued about it, a silly exchange that danced between philosophic and metaphysical objections to the intrusion of regiment into our natural state of being and pragmatic reasonings about productivity, organization and time management. Funny stuff. I think we both had a point, but I’m not sure we ever found consensus. In the end we moved the clock to a less conspicuous location and let it be.
These days I have a much harder time staving off boredom during the transit times in my trips. Partly it is due to changes in the way I perceive time. Often I want the day to last longer with more time in the morning to wake up and gradually ease into full consciousness, more time in the afternoon to get things done, and more time in the evenings to unwind or indulge in hobbies or entertainment. Years seem way too short, as do months and weeks. More to do than there is time in which to do it.
Bicycles transporting coffeeFor this reason, I really begrudge time that I deem to be completely wasted. There are very few occasions when I hand out that designation. Sometimes I can watch TV for hours, gaining little of importance, but enjoying it nonetheless. Or idling in a coffeeshop, just chilling, just watching the world go by. That can be fun too. But standing in lines at airports, standing in lines at security, standing in lines waiting to enter or exit a plane… there is absolutely nothing to appreciate about that. Standing in line at immigration or staring at a moving belt hoping that my luggage will pop out is not fun at all.
But I think the worst may be layovers. 6 hours, that’s the most ruthless of them all. It’s not enough time to get into the city and back, not really worth the expense or effort, but it is more time than can be passed having a meal or wandering the airport. Just off a five-hour transit from Rwanda or Tanzania, most of it spent reading a book, I have no immediate interest in setting my eyes back on the pages. My friends and colleagues back home are still asleep, a full 8 hours behind, so there is no point in communication and the roaming charges are too steep anyhow.
It is those six hours that I loath, made worse knowing that another six hours are waiting for me in London Heathrow, when I arrive blurry-eyed at 5 AM tomorrow morning after another nine hours airborne. At 5 AM nothing is open and the airport is as sleepy as I am. And six hours from now I will step on another plane, ready to sit once again for a full eight hours on the way to Chicago. I will arrive as rush hour begins, so after waiting in lines at immigration I will wait in the back of a taxi, inching along I-90 on the way to my apartment. When I get home, I will sink into a chair with my brain not working well after about 30 hours without significant sleep. The evening itself will be wasted too because I’m not really wanting to go to bed for the night but I’m too blurry to really get much out of the remainder of the day. I will try to watch a movie, but will invariably fall asleep in my chair two-thirds of the way through, missing the resolution. When I awake tomorrow, much of that day will be wasted too, since the combination of jetlag and lack of sleep will reduce me to about 60% functionality.
Was that enough complaining for one day? I think so. Not much can be gained through complaint. But I did want to shatter the myth that being a coffee buyer is always sexy and exciting. It is great work, no doubt about it. But just like most anything else, it comes pre-loaded with plenty of significant drawbacks. Often I wish that NASA would stop sending people and plants and monkeys into orbit and focus their energy on making earthly transport more efficient. It might yield nothing, but then again I’m not so sure what we’ve gained in the last twenty years after trillions of dollars spent on endless, secretive, and obscure space programs. Why not put the money into education and get us a bunch of new millennium Einsteins who will transform our ability to manipulate Time?
Anyway, back to Rwanda. I spent the last week there, a glorious week, spending quality time with many good friends: coffee students, farmers, researchers, co-op leaders, development workers from various NGOs, and some local business people. This time I was also in the company of an admired peer and one of my closest buddies on the planet, the immensely talented Peter Giuliano (the buyer for another coffee company called Counter Culture). He and I work together in Rwanda, and it may strike some as odd that we collaborate so closely. After all, our companies are direct competitors in many ways and many markets. But there is tremendous value in this kind of cooperation. We always learn from each other, every single time we are together. And by combining our energies and insights we are able to accomplish a lot.
Development work (that’s what working with coffee in these countries is, really) is incredibly complicated. The puzzle is large enough and intricate enough to defy imagination. But the reward is almost inconceivably gratifying. Getting amazing coffees out of the mess that exists in many producing nations while helping to improve the livelihoods of those whose efforts makes these coffees possible is a hard-to-beat endeavor. I can’t think of many things I’d rather do. When Peter and I put our heads together on this stuff, we often make things move more swiftly more precisely and with more immediate results than either of us would probably achieve doing it solo. I am grateful for our friendship and professional alliance.
This past week we visited several coops that we are in partnership with here: the Nyakizu, Rusenyi, and Humure groups form the backbone of our Rwandan coffee mark Zirikana. First up was Nyakizu (Abakundakawa), located in the far south reaches of Rwanda, very close to the Burundi border. It is a small group and has been in a decidedly chaotic state for the last three years. They’ve switched Presidents three times, and the entirety of the cooperative management team has been in constant flux. Makes it hard to earn progress when the leadership turnover is this dramatic. The coop is beyond bankrupt, and they nearly lost their washing station last month as BRD (Rwandan Development Bank) made moves to repossess it in the wake of missed payments on outstanding debts. In total they still owe more than 150,000 dollars to the bank, and at this point anything they’ve been able to pay has been gobbled up by interest. No movement whatsoever on the principle.
Why is that? We’ve been paying great prices from the start…way over “market value” and more than we pay in many Latin countries, where economies are a bit more developed and labor costs are considerably higher. We’ve volunteered thousand of hours giving training and advice. The PEARL project (and now SPREAD, a follow-up project with a clever new acronym for a name) has spent countless thousands of dollars in the last few years on technical assistance and infrastructure to help build the capacity of the cooperative. RWASHOSSCO, the recently formed federation of cooperatives that helps the individual groups with export and marketing services along with countless other hard-to-measure types of assistance, pours loads of energy into helping these groups get on track.
The answer to that question (like the answers to most questions having to do with coffee) is not simple. A big piece of it is lack of reliable and competent leadership and management. Too often, elections (more accurately called “appointments”) are mostly political in nature. It is not the best educated or most qualified individuals given responsibility, but rather the most popular, the most outspoken, or even sometimes the most gullible—those willing to step into a role where failure is the likeliest outcome and who will later shoulder the blame when things go wrong. In so many instances the leaders are the ones who want to climb over the rest, who see the position as an opportunity for personal gain, and who are shameless enough to seek it even at the expense of their neighbors. There is this Latin story that Peter reminded me of which explains why it is so easy to boil crabs. You throw them in the pot, and as the water gets hotter they try to escape. Once in a while one will almost make it, getting a hook on the top of the pot after major effort. But just as it is about to get over the top, the other crabs reach up and pull it back in. That happens all the time in developing countries. So corruption or incompetence leads to financial mismanagement and loss of profit. The leaders change, the debt grows, and the cycle starts over again.
Next up on the list is interference from private companies or state-run coffee exporters who lure coop members away with “bribes” in the form of artificially high cherry prices that will probably cause the company to lose money on the business but will bring them farmers and help them acquire overseas clients. The coops lose out on coffee because the competition is rigging the game. What happens then? Not enough volume of coffee to sell means lower income, lessened ability to pay back debt, and an erosion of confidence among cooperative members. Soon enough the coop will crumble, the washing station is put on the auction block, and now the farmers have no other choice but to sell to the private company. Of course, those high cherry prices are no longer there at this point and now the exploitation can resume without resistance.
What else? Electricity failing for long periods of time mid-crop and causing quality loss. Random and unpredictable weather events leading to more quality loss because farmers are not trained to deal with unexpected complications in the formula. Delays in payment due to export complications that can arise from a myriad of places (often a result of shoddy infrastructure) lead to further debt. Lack of cash on hand to pay for incoming cherry puts coops at a severe disadvantage versus privately funded stations and results in further loss of volume, which lowers total income and reduces economy of scale.
Next week I will tell you the second half of my story from Rwanda. And hang in there, OK? Rereading what I wrote, I want you to know that I am telling you all of this not to get you down, but to illustrate just a few of the challenges that face these new and fragile organizations. And to point out just how inspiring it is to see them endure against all odds, and to begin to show signs of real progress.
And speaking of progress, you might remember the story of Victoria Dalton-Diaz and her Matalapa farm. I said that we might have a Micro-Lot from her farm, and that’s just what we are featuring this week. This coffee met all the requirements for Direct Trade status and we are offering it as Los Inmortales, El Salvador Micro-Lot: Finca Matalapa. The coffee offers up delicate floral aromatics and a juicy citrus acidity. Please enjoy it while it lasts.
As always, find our Nods at:
http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/origin/offerings.
Onward,
Geoff Watts
VP of Coffee
Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea
Popularity: 16% [?]
A Nod or two ago I started reflecting on how my relationship with traveling has changed over the years and especially how some things that never before had seemed burdensome were now beginning to feel a bit wearying. That’s to be expected, I suppose…most things are more exciting when they are new, and it is easy to disregard small drawbacks when one is so entertained and occupied with assimilating fresh experience. It strikes me that somehow this condition must sit at the epicenter of the Happiness equation—the ability to continuously experience the world and its sensory delights with fresh eyes, the ability to soak it all up and never get saturated. Wasn’t there a film about that? “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” I think it was. It might be interesting to watch that in a double-feature with “Groundhog Day” and juxtapose those two scenarios.
What makes it so inspiring? Part of it has to do with providence. I can’t shake this feeling that for some reason I’ve met this farmer at precisely the right moment in time, the right point of convergence in the coffee world, a time when both of us are ready to take the tools we’ve developed and map out what the future of coffee can look like. Coffee 2000. The new deal. You see, this farm is the farm of dreamers. It was started in 2001 at a time when investing in growing coffee seemed like a patently ludicrous proposition. The market was in the gutter, the planet was oversupplied with poor quality coffees, and the immediate future seemed pretty bleak for most growers around the world. Farms were going out of business left and right, and would continue to do so for the next four years. Many economists probably would have recommended gambling on NBA games or selling typewriters as more promising career moves. Milk-based drinks were dominating the landscape in the US and overseas retail markets, new “energy drinks” were capturing the attention of the sugar-addicted youth population, and coffee beans themselves had somehow become the least expensive part of most “coffee” beverages.
So Camilo planted coffee. He took what was at the time nothing but pasture land, nearly barren, and created a farm. And he did it as dreamer and a perfectionist would, taking nearly two years to consult with farmers, agronomists, environmental engineers, coffee roasters and exporters before getting it up and running. The result is a coffee lover’s fantasy, a perfect marriage of exceptional environmental advantages and an engineer’s sense of orchestrated harmony. Most of the farm sits at close to 2000 meters, a glorious altitude for the best types of coffee tree. It is partitioned in a sensible fashion, divided into lots of Typica, Bourbon, and other heirloom varieties of coffee that are revered for the cup characteristics of their seeds. Each section was planned out meticulously based on advice from field-leading agronomists, with a big variety of different shade tree species and other plants spaced appropriately to promote the symbiotic ecosystem interactivity and minimize the need for additional inputs to keep the coffee healthy.
