The last month or so since my last post has been quite a whirlwind of experiences – spending Christmas with other volunteers in Santa Fé (see above picture. Will and I had to find ways to cool off), New Years with some great friends, new and old, coffee training, and the beginning of some cool projects in site.
One of the highlights of the last months was visiting Brian’s site with Abigail and her awesome sister, Eleanor. The main source of income in Brian’s site is a government project that brought in Africanized honeybees and we had the opportunity to harvest honey with a local producer. As we were suiting up, I realized I had made two big mistakes: only bringing Tevas that did not cover my whole foot and being born much taller than the average Panamanian.
Even if you have never worked with bees, you can imagine the ubiquitous white space suit people wear to protect themselves from bee stings. Now imagine Micah, six feet tall, 200 pounds in a suit built for someone 6 inches and 60 pounds smaller. I felt like I was wearing my little brother’s clothes; about 8 inches of my calf was exposed and I had to repeatedly pull down the sleeves to cover my wrists. Luckily the rubber gloves covered my wrists, but the weak link in my costume was from the knee down which was only covered by a pair of knee high socks. Not bee proof socks.
As we walked up the hill with our hand powered smokers (which theoretically helps pacify the bees) and other harvesting tools I started to make peace with the fact that I was going to be stung all over my ankles. As we began working the smokers and taking out the shelves full of honey, the bees got pissed. Really, really pissed. Even Brian’s counterpart was surprised by how quickly the bees started swarming us. In hindsight, my deodorant may have helped; I had no idea that smells like that help get the bee-adrenaline going.
I have been stung by my fair share of bees. As I kid, I loved throwing rocks at things, and those things were occasionally beehives. Yes it was dumb, but what 10 – 13 year old boy would not think that’s a great idea? Those various species of bees and wasps hurt when they stung, but the pain is manageable. Africanized bees, on the other hand, are a breed of their own. Their stings hurt. A LOT. Furthermore, when one bee stings you, its commits bee suicide for the good of the hive and sends out a wave of pheromones that attracts other self-less bees.
When the first bee got its stinger through my socks, my first impression was simple shock – I didn’t remember bee stings hurting that bad. As the 5th, 10th, and 15th bees stung me the pain started to genuinely set in. I had the smoker in my hand and started working my legs, but it did little ease the pain or fight off the increasing numbers of bees on my legs.
As we started to speed up the work to get the hell away from the increasingly aggressive bees, I started to notice a handful of bees circling quickly around my face. As one landed on my forehead I realized they were inside the mesh screen that made up my space suit helmet. Somehow the mask did not sit flush against my hat and the bees had taken advantage of the situation.
My first reaction was panic. Then a sort of, “well I’m screwed” sort of chuckle. Then a moment of masochistic peace with the situation – I could freak out and tear off my mask, exposing my face to the many thousands of bees around me, or just take whatever the handful of bees in my mask had to offer. In a moment of “whoosaw” clarity I chose the later.
As we returned to the house, I tried to calmly take off my mask and suit. Although we were a good two hundred yards from the bee hives, there were still enough bees attracted by the pheromones of their fallen brothers to come give me a few last goodbye stings on the face. The upside was we got free honey! As well as extremely swollen and chapped ankles, and a few good sized, throbbing bumps on my face.
Peter Pan’s Kitchen
A few weeks after my honey harvesting experience, during a week of coffee training we met a French brother and sister (the nicknames Wendy and Cornflake evolved quickly) who ended up coming to my site for a few days with my fellow volunteer, Paul.
We all immediately hit it off and we spent the better part of the following days on my porch talking, listening to music, making food, and taking occasional trips to the river. One of the highlights of their time in Guabal was a night that turned very childish, very quickly. Wendy and I headed down to the store to buy food for dinner, a bit later than planned due to getting sucked into some Russian card game, at which I terrible.
Unfortunately the store was closed so we were stuck with the remaining harvest from my garden and what we had in the house: a few mustard greens, rice, sea-weed sushi paper (thanks mom!), two cucumbers, and siracha hot sauce. Instead of admitting the store was closed, Wendy and I decided to make an elaborate list of things we bought, including saffron, lobster tail, chicken, squid, honeydew melon, prosciutto, aged cheese, peppers, and whatever else came to mind. We immediately launched into how we thought we could start with a chilled lobster bisque, some Spanish tapas, a nice green salad with goat cheese, and finish with a pot of paella. Her brother, Cornflake, and Paul jumped in and started adding dishes to our quickly developing seven-course meal. Our giddiness started to grow as we all began laughing like little children, talking about the food we missed and what we were going to make for dinner.
At some point into our scheming, Cornflake (the brother) asked in a moment of seriousness, “but what did you guys actually get?” Wendy and I looked at each other, then I looked back at him and asked, “Do you remember the scene in Hook where the Lost Boys could eat anything they could imagine? We are kind of like the Lost Boys right now.” Apparently that did not sink in, because we quickly regressed into talking about ice cream, crème brulee, and other unobtainable deliciousness. After a few more minutes of that, Cornflake asked again, “No seriously, what did you get?”
We had blast making what turned out to be a delicious concoction of Campo Sushi: rice with siracha, wrapped with mustard greens and cucumber in sea-weed sushi paper. The joke of Peter Pan’s kitchen continued throughout the next few days and my kitchen from now on has a bit more appeal to it. Peter Pan’s Kitchen is here to stay! The downside is that fantasizing about what my rice, lentils, and sardines could be by myself quickly devolves into a sort of odd, lonely delirium. Luckily I like lentils and sardines.
On to more work based activities! The last couple months in Panama have been full of parties and other festivities, so it has been pretty slow when it comes to work. That being said, the tantalizing smell of roasting coffee and the intrigue of the coffee industry has gotten quite a hold on me. I have started to learn everything I can about coffee production, the supply chain, sourcing strategies and how coffee buying practices can be reorganized to get more money to producers. Luckily, the cooperative in our neighboring town of Santa Fé has one of the biggest processing plants in the country and are willing to buy whatever production we have in Guabal.
I have been able to bring together around ten producers (this number keeps changing) that have the motivation and ability to start relatively good-sized coffee operations. Right now we are in the midst of solving three fungal problems that seem to be the most prolific in our area and finding the blueprints for a solar dryer.
Coffee has a handful of steps it needs to go through before it becomes the beans we are used to seeing. First, coffee is picked off the trees in a cherry form. The bean is surrounded by a sweet, fleshy mucilage with a red skin that needs to be removed. There a few different types of processing, but in my area people dry the cherries in the sun after harvesting. Unfortunately it rains all the time, so the chance of fungal infections, and a lower grade product, is very high. If we can build solar dryers (think mini greenhouse) we can quickly and effectively dry the cherries, thereby getting a better price.
The longer-term goal is to get together enough producers to get a grant for a peeler. A peeler strips the coffee bean of the dried flesh as well as an underlying skin that also needs to be removed. The price difference between fresh coffee cherries and dried beans is sizeable; in a meeting with the cooperative yesterday, their buyer told me they pay $8 per 5-gallon bucket for fresh cherries and $30 per 5-gallon bucket for dried and peeled beans. That’s value added!
Hope all is well in the US of A. Sooo are we at war again yet?