Coffee, Culture, and Combustion

Note: Gabe is traveling to Santa Rosa de Cabal (near Periera) in Colombia to do a 2 week Fullbright Specialist Program Project with La Corporación Universitaria Santa Rosa de Cabal (UNISARC). He’s made a goal to post at least four times (once after returning) to share about this experience.

There are some things that cross cultural and geographic contexts, even when they look a bit different. 

This realization is actually part of what drove me to my graduate studies. I wanted to learn more about why young people were young people in Harlem, Tacna, Peru, and Bogotá, Colombia, and yet at the same time, they weren’t.

This past Saturday morning in the plaza in front of my hotel was a farmer’s market, Santa Rosa style. Local farmers selling their crops, check. Some organic and chic stands peddling organic creams, pill, and elixirs to cure what ails you, check. Made from scratch food items, check. (I’d recommend the envueltos). Live rabbits for sale, both as pets and for meat--hold on.

I was part of the experience because UNISARC gets a whole row of the plaza. It’s prime placement in front of the 180+ year old church. One of my main contacts was overseeing the whole endeavor. I think part of their interest in having me join might have been my height too, as I was enlisted to help put up and take down the tents. It was explained to me that unlike foreigners, Colombians are “enanos,” which roughly translate to elves/dwarves/very short. To be honest, it was my main contribution.

But getting to our main focus, a farmers market in coffee country must involve coffee, right? One of the UNISARC tables highlighted a graduate, Eliana Gómez, who now runs a farm with her husband, Sebastián Camilo Velásquez, a third generation coffee farmer. So, of course, I was interested (and bought a bag of their coffee). 

The farm is called La Cumparsita, which translates as the little street parade, and they began their most recent production in 2022. By training, the owners are agricultural engineers, so they admitted they bring a particular lens to the work. But it has seemed to work - the coffee has won awards and according to Eliana, is being exported and sold via Amazon, though I couldn’t find it.

Talking with Eliana, I also dug a bit deeper to ask about what it was like farming coffee and if climate change was affecting them. They told me that it had been going well - I mean, they have won awards - but that it can be a fickle business. They felt like the altitude and climate worked perfectly for producing quality coffee, and that this hadn’t changed in recent year. Plagues - insects, disease - were more on their mind. 

They noted that the amounts of rain - which are tied to phenomena like El Niño and La Niña can be more disruptive.

Short aside. El Niño is indeed Spanish for The Niño. Enjoy.

All in all, it was nice to just chat and learn from Eliana. It felt like it brought me one step further along in my quest to more deeply appreciate all it takes - and the lives involved - for me to enjoy my daily cup (or closer to quart) of joe.

Before ending, I would be remiss to not mention my wonderful hosts taking me to play tejo and get some grilled cow’s intestine (or maybe pig intestine - there was a bit of a debate). Tejo, for those uninitiated, involves hurling a heavy metal puck fifty to a hundred feet away at a solid block of mud with a metal ring and two small triangles with a bit of gunpowder. It’s kind of like bags meets fireworks. Alas, I never hit the triangle or get the satisfaction of a tiny explosion, but I did hold my own with my hosts.

The highlight of the day might not have been the coffee conversation (though it was pretty enlightening) or the tejo, but putting Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga’s Die With A Smile on my phone and doing a duet with one of my host’s nine-year-old daughter while drinking a darn good americano on the street. For those who know me, moments like that feel like the loose boy deep down. Thanks Xiomena!