Since my last blog, my days have been full of meetings about projects, coffee research, and reading an unhealthy number of Tom Clancy books. My boss also came to my site and with her help the community and I put together a pest control project that has taken up much of March. I have been visiting people’s land and doing research on how to control a bug that transmits a virus into yucca (or cassava) as well as a sort of caterpillar that destroys plantain “trees” from the inside out.
Although there are a handful of ways to control the bugs, they are extremely labor intensive (for organic methods) or extremely toxic (for chemical methods). Trying to find a balance that the community wants has been a bit of a challenge. I hope that within a couple of months I can find someone who is willing to put forth a little extra effort to see if some of these strategies work and there fore act as a sort of leader for the others who are interested. This is undoubtedly a work in progress and I am still trying to figure out how best to make these strategies applicable and realistic in the situation in Guabal.
In addition to the pest management project for yucca and plantain, we are finally getting started on a coffee project! At this point it looks like we will break people into two groups: those who already have coffee trees (more than 100) and want to sell in the coming year and those who don’t have coffee trees in quantity yet, but want to sell in the coming years (coffee takes about 3-4 years to mature).
For those already producing, we will be trying to get a grant for solar dryers and a hand-crank coffee peeler as well as doing workshops on pruning and pest control. After you harvest coffee it needs to be dried and peeled and if either stage is done incorrectly, the farmer ends up losing a bunch of potential profit. For those who want to start farms, we will be doing workshops on farm planning, as well as doing a sort of buddy system with those farmers already producing in quantity to learn from them. There is a lot of excitement about these projects in the community, and I am equally excited to work in a field I am quickly developing a passion for – coffee!
My last few weeks have been filled with farm visits for either yucca and plantain problems or various coffee problems. I will feel busy with farm visits for a week or so and then be equally obligation-free for a few days in a row. These days are filled with me trying to find excuses to get out of the hammock and thinking about how Peace Corps can, on days like this, feel like a sort of practice retirement. A couple community projects, reading, hiking. Life could be worse!
The most exciting thing that has happened over the last few weeks was being offered the Peace Corps Panama’s National Coffee Coordinator position! On top of the work I have in site I will be working to organize the coffee program, do trainings for the incoming group, and work to create continuity between current and future volunteer’s projects. I will officially start in a couple weeks so I am still learning exactly what the responsibilities will be. In the mean time, I am learning as much as I can about everything coffee. But first, back to Tom Clancy.