It was just annoying– those emails I get from people that I haven’t heard from in months, years usually. The suspicious words in the subject line: “No Subject.” Something viral this way comes. Usually I delete these emails without much thought because they come in patterns, repeatedly from one person, then, after my deleting finger does it’s work, another long lost friend. I asked Google about this and the suggestion is to change my password. By opening the email it spreads. And of course, even I know better than to click on a link that says: “Hey, I thought you’d like to see this great way to make millions of dollars from home.”
Still, when you hear from a person you haven’t heard from in a long time and would like to catch up…
The elegant solution is just to email to the person that the hijacker/ibot selected from my contacts a real message. “Hey, guy were you trying to contact me or was that some cyber prank?” His response: “Joe, I was just thinking about you, planning to call you later this week. Want to come to Kuwait?”
Insha’Allah or God willing!
Feburary 11 2012, less than two months after returning from Panama and less than a month from getting the invitation:
This is my last post of the year. I started it when Maria Luisa and I were still in Panamá, but with all the activity around our departure– including a last minute interview for our documentary– I never got to finish the story of the tremendous time we had on our last Sunday. And I still haven’t. However, many of you have seen and commented on the mountain high scenics that Maria took of me.
So…to finish out the year with a bang, I’ll post what I have written, the first third of that wonderful excursion to the interior. I plan to continue to post Panamá blogs– there are numerous stories I still have to write about our four and a half month stay.
I thank everyone for taking the time to read, comment, send emails and follow me here at joejowers.wordpress.com. I have enjoyed writing and appreciated you comments.
Best wishes for the New Year.
PanamáVieJoe
~~
This is the way Chepito started his day, Sunday December 11th:
Chepito in the morning
Maria Luisa and I, on the other hand, put on our professional hats prior to a planned drive to the countryside.
We went searching here…
Fresh!
Fish Market.
…for a young woman we met and interviewed in downtown Panamá City—Ave. Central– two weeks ago. We’ve been working on a documentary, about the informal economy, for over two months now. We arranged to meet Astrid, who works at the fish market, in order to record her on her job. That plan was put on hold when Maria had her accident.
We have visited the fish market a number of times. Just the other day Mari captured some incredible images of pelicans. I shot the “Pelican Rainbow” shot, which appeared on my daily cloud report. You can see it on the photography tab. Adjacent to the market is the long pier where the fishermen launch their boats and city skyline provides it with a grand background.
It was Sunday morning, but the working class was hard at work.
Busy.
Not everyone was bustling about preparing for the days customers and tourists. We found these guys busy with another sort of activity.
Laborers waiting?
Dominoes, candidate for the national board game?
Not spades, not bid whisk...dominoes!
One of the early stories Maria Luisa told me– one of those stories that began my personal panameño mythology– was about men congregating in a public street playing dominoes, slapping down the bones. “Plack!” Well this was not that street, but imagine my delight.
We did not find Astrid, but this Sunday morning was busy. The pier is situated between two tourist attractions: Casco Viejo and the panoramic view of Cinta Costera. Naturally, there are a number of places to buy fish.
Fresh fish.
The menu.
We did not find our interviewee but we picked up another willing subject.
Car watcher at fish market.
This man watches cars and generally facilitates parking. It’s a common occupation in Panamá. Indeed, our first interview was with a tailor that became a “bien cuida’o” [1] when the economy changed and his job went overseas. The man above is a construction worker that watches cars between gigs.
Enough work. A short cut through Chinatown and we’re off to a little village called Chica and a national park.
Short cut through Chinatown
Mother and baby, Sunday morning. Soot courtesy of the Diablos Rojos.
See it? You can taste it.
These guys will be gone soon, so we are told. Dangerous, crowded, noisy, hot…I’ll miss them. So every chance I get I take a picture.
Devil on the bridge.
It's days are numbered.
I’d like to squeeze in one last ride before Wednesday. I’ve talked to a fellow sound enthusiast about how musical they can be, but I’ve yet to prove that with my digital recorder.
Everytime we cross the bridge, we take pictures.
Bridge of the Americas
Actually, we need no excuse at all to take pictures. In fact we have only recently agreed not to take pictures while at the wheel. It was Maria’s turn to drive and we were late, but I begged for a stop.
Low and behold, the informal market strikes again.
Roadside merchant. To the bridge ya'll. Photo by ML Amado.
Roadside merchant, Bridge of the Americas. Photo by ML Amado.
Not so unusual, considering that perhaps as much as 60% of the panameña labor force is “informal.” That can mean a lot of things, like, no boss, no taxes… no benefits, social security or pension, no steady reliable income. It could mean that you can only afford to be a squatter in condemned housing, living on the second story, avoiding places in the floor where the weight of a small woman might make one the unexpected and unwanted visitor in the home below. Then again, you might make $70 on a good day in the right spot. That’s what the informal market and our documentary is about. If I say I’ll be IMing you, it won’t be a text message.
It will take some more research to find out what claims like this mean to the average Panamanain:
Myth?
Another mythology?
another religion...?
If you promise not to base your term paper on the accuracy of my statistics, I will tell you what I’ve read and heard. The canal pumps about 7 billion in to the coffers of the Panama. Gold is Panamá’s biggest export. It used to be bananas. There are gated communities filled with U.S. and European expats in the highlands of Boquete. One of them flooded because the developers cleared all the trees before they built the expensive homes.
Connected to the Panamá canal. Near the Bridge of the Americas.
Not part of the canal technically perhaps, but not quite the bay either. This is where ships are loaded with cargo. We could see this port from a different view from our apartment window. Representing billions and billions… of dollars.
Mythology is not necessarily bad. Allow my definition: a way of simplifying something so complex and or mysterious so that the average person can grasp it, use it. How money, how the economy behaves is complex. One thing to keep sight of is that money is just the representative of value.
Now for some value that is not as clearly attached to the dollar sign.
Living fence.
Talk about values. For one, that mountain in the background is one that I’ve seen time and time again from a distance. It reminds me of “Half Dome,” the mountain made famous in Ansel Adam’s photos of the U.S. west. Second, the fence in the foreground is typical of fences in Panamá’s countryside. I have a bit of a catalogue of these living fences. And, not the least, is the particular type of rolling hill at the left also seen all over Panamá. Those hills first took my breath away when we traveled to Venao Beach back in August. Three for one. Now that’s value. This was minutes from the highway, about an hour from Panamá City. We stopped. I took pictures with my camera and Maria used her’s.
Ouch!
by Maria
Then she used mine.
I wish she would hurry up.
I’ll keep busy. Keep my mind off of…not taking pictures of these mountains, these hills, this fence.
Processing the day.
the jumping market
it’s life
or death here
the lobsters iced into
unconsciousness.
Whatever. I wanna take pictures.
Photo by ML Amado.
Little did we know that just ahead was an even more beautiful view.
MLA
This guy had a lot to say.
"Go up!"
Now.
Probably he was telling us that, “The higher you go, the better it gets. So don’t dawdle.”
And everywhere people are walking. We see them in the city, where buses cost 25 cents and we never paid more than $3 for a cab, and on improbable stretches of highway and road– where the last town we saw was miles and miles back that way.[1]
Walking, everywhere walking.
Photo courtesy of M.L. Amado I.
End Part One
—–
[1] If you’ve followed my blog you know that footnotes are to correct out right lies. We paid more for what I consider special trips– When our trip was prearranged and we were picked up at 6 am. A trip to the airport would have cost more too.
Sí, Day of the Dead was a month ago, but it was such a busy time with all the Fiestas Patrias celebrations that I put this post aside…in my mind. Simply, November the 2nd is the day when Panamanians honor the ancestors. It is a religious, catholic holiday celebrated nationally. People go to clean the grave sites, adorn tombstones with flowers, speak… pray in the cemeteries.
hack the living weed
expose the grave stone
day of the dead
Day of the dead 1.
day of the dead 2
rain drops
millions fall to death
the river of life surges
Then it rained.
It was also an opportunity for enterprising informal market workers to offer a service:
Flowers for sale.
Cut flowers to lay on the graves.
While we were at the cemetery, there were workers with weed-wackers trimming around plots for those who didn’t bring their shears or machettes.
Sí, en Panamá. It is a big deal and from my living encyclopedia of all knowledge worldly and celestial, Maria Luisa the day traditional starts with serenades—say around midnight.
So, I say, any day is a great day to honor your mother. To everybody, anywhere, who is a mother or has or had one, “Feliz Día de la Madre.”
Now, why is this day celebrated in Dec? I’ll leave that answer to Wikipedia conjectures.
Here, in the Amado household, the phone will ring all day with congratulations to the women who live here.
On December the first we were supposed to be flying back to the states. Instead, because of Maria Luisa’s injury, we will stay another two weeks. It would have been hard to leave Panamá. It will be hard to leave.
However, there is another parting that brings regret. This is our last night in the apartment in Bella Vista. We will be trading our “seven floors up” view for the second story room at Maria’s parents house. We are grateful to have some place to land, but we recognize that a lot of the magic of our stay here was a function of this lovely apartment sublet to us.
Cue the bird.
Dec 1st.
I so didn’t want to get up this morning at 5am. Even more so since no one was paying me for it. But, by divine providence and against the pattern of the last few days, it was clear this morning. I mean clear, clear. I could see the stars! So cloudless and perfect I could not resist going to the roof. Stuffing my camera bag with every lens I own, I was wondering if I’d ever seen that many stars at night in Panamá. I was up there by 5:54 according to the time stamp on my first video file. Why didn’t I get up earlier and properly prepare?
What do I do first? Where’s my flashlight? I had to trust my fingers’ memory to navigate the control and menu buttons. The flag on Ancón Hill was stark against the dark sky. I used a funky video mode on my camera that digitally zooms in.
A waste of time, what was I thinking. No time for experimenting get the shot, Joe!
Still, this:
Pretty...dark and pretty dark.
At least I can see why I bothered:
Now for some panoramas. One nice one. Too bad this web page and my high quality image go together like oil and water. I dream of printing a 4 foot wide photo!
It was worth it.
Maria Luisa joined me coming upstairs with her cup of tea.
Yesterday or was it the day before?…We were able for the first time to access the other side of the roof.
Passage to the other side.
This morning was Maria Luisa’s first time seeing the new view. She found this guy:
The screw-- el tornillo.
That twisty building, second from the right [ish], has been the subject of numerous photographs. I’ve tried to take a picture of it every time I see it and in as many novel ways as I can, but this shot is Maria’s. It’s called a lot of things but “el tornillo,” the screw, is my favorite.
“Hey why don’t you take a picture of my cup?”
“In a minute.”
*@!* manual lens, digital camera!
Joe = coffee, Maria Luisa, tea. And she’s gotta have it– té.
Té
I went down and made one of the worst cups of coffee I’ve made here in Panamá. Month old Euro-roast. I drank it though.
Looks good though.
Her and His.
Mari saw this and wouldn’t let me move–
Shadows and light.
Yesterday, I suggested that we take a panorama together on the roof. Last night is was too late; we missed golden hour. This morning it was too late; we missed the deep saturated skies that I captured earlier.
I love you.
I took one in the ugly light but I’ll try again later, when we are hot and sweaty from packing. This is our last day in the apartment, sigh.
It was soup and mashed potatoes for Maria Luisa for the rest of the two day trip. We decided to stick around as planned. From Taboga there are only a couple of regular trips to and from the island each day—a choppy quick ride that takes 20 minutes and the longer leisurely ferry that manages to swing by large ships [photo opportunity] as it crawls to and from the island.
Maria Luisa took it easy resting and sleeping the rest of the day and venturing out of our hotel only for a stroll and a bite to eat at this fonda– a hole in the wall where one can eat the local food– blocks from our hotel.
~
Years ago I wrote this poem for Maria, for us really. Here’s a version of it:
our road
just over the atlantic
our road is clay red
it stains our feet
at a point most convenient we cross the continent
on that day in the future
the air is heavy on our skin like birth
sticky but sweet
entering the pacific
the distance slides away like the tide
and silent worlds between us
remain (un)said
untranslatable
Perhaps it was occasioned by Maria Luisa’s suggestion that I visit Panama, but I have the vague memory of this poem seeding at an even deeper place. It speaks to our dreams together.
October, a year ago, I noticed a cross on this hill on our first trip to Taboga.
Immediately the poem came to mind. In a different version I speak of the two of us climbing a hill and seeing the Pacific from above. Since then, since October 2010 I’ve wanted to walk up that road with Maria. Last year we started out too late. The hour and a half hike would have made us miss the last returning boat to Panama. Ditto our first trip this year—something got in the way of us going up the mountain.
I made it known that this trip was the trip for us to climb to the top.
Then there was this fateful trip. Minutes off the boat and the dream of us holding hands at that high altitude slipped away… again. The injuries Maria Luisa sustained made hiking up the mountain impossible.
I had to face the fact that we would not climb this mountain together.
That afternoon I met a New Yorker in the village [no, not that village]. He had just taken one of the trails on the island and was kind enough to info-share. He handed me a flier with a map:
That was Wednesday evening. After it was clear that we would stay the night and take the later boat on Thursday I decided that I would make the climb myself.
The next day I consulted the internet and the brocuhre, packed my bag, grabbed my tripod, had Maria Luisa take this picture…
Hike ready
…and walked out the room. No hat. That’s a problem. I went back for a hotel towel knowing that the tropical sun is ferocious.
Along the paved walk to the outskirts of the village I came upon three U.S. expats that apparently lived on the island. One gave some rather specific advice and landmarks that I’d find useful. All sources agreed that I should take the right path when I came to a fork in the road if I wanted to reach the crosses.
I got lost quickly.
I passed a garbage dump which enraged me. There in the middle of paradise people thrown all manner of refuse. I walked through one spot that litterally buzzed with flies. It was erie and foreboding– the heat, the trash, the flies and a dozen or so vultures feeding in the trash. It was only on my return that it dawned on me– doh! — that like every other place in the world, trash has to go somewhere. This was the somewhere for Taboga; accessible by a road and away from the village.
The flier said it would take up to 45 minutes to reach the summit, but it took me about 20 to reach this:
I figured out when I got there that I had taken the wrong path. Well, that is if finding this sort of beauty can be considered wrong.
No, it can’t.
I would not reach the cross this day. I debated going back down the hill and trying again– there were a number of places where I could have taken right turns, as I was repeatedly told.
Finally, I decided to sit on this log and write in the quietest place I had found in all of Panama.
This picture needs something.
Me...
...and the towel.
I was burned crispy last time.
Ommmmm...
Somebody is coming!
I heard voices. I met two hikers that also got “lost.” After a chat, I figured my alone time wasn’t going to happen either. Down the mountain I went. On the way I decided that getting to the cross was something I would save for the next trip when Maria and I could do it together.
Now, armed with the knowledge that the trails are easier than advertised, I can assure Mari that we can safely make the trip.
Only on return did I actually read the map carefully enough to see that there are two paths that lead to a cross[es]. One trail leads to the cross on the hill and another trail leads to the burial place of three suspected pirates.
So, there’s plenty more to explore, many reason to return and still the chance to fulfill our poem’s destiny.
We have traveled to our island paradise three times now. This is our tale of woe.
First, I must introduce a new character in the drama of our isthmus adventure.
Dolores, one of Maria’s best friends, came to visit with us for a week or so. She is an island woman hailing from Yap, an island country, in Micronesia. She liked Panama from the start.
Though we couldn’t give her the grand tour of the country, we took her to our favorite spots in Panama City: The canal, Casco Viejo, Sal Si Puedes, Avenida Central, El Cangrejo, Amador Causeway, San Carlos [an hour outside of the city]…
…Blockbuster and of course the Amado household in San Francisco to meet Maria’s aunts and Chepito the wonder dog. [Dolores met Maria’s Parents already.]
Maria and I went to Taboga as I reported earlier; it is perhaps our favorite place, this tiny spec of volcanic stone and soil, in the gulf of Panama.
It is the grand trip that we had planned for our special guest.
23 Nov 2011
Dolores, Maria, and Joe wake early to catch a cab at 6am, purchase our tickets at 7 and embark to the Isle de Taboga, 12 miles away, but an hour’s ride on the slow boat.
From the pier on the Amador Causeway, I’m not sure if you can see Taboga. There are several humps, bumps or tree covered islands that can be seen from this bit of connective tissue, the causeway, but which one is Taboga, I can’t tell. It stands to reason that if I can see Panama from Taboga then the inverse should be true…? Perhaps if I had been studying Spanish I’d have the gumption to ask someone in the know.
Maria and Dolores are interested in other things.
Making friends. Maria’s encyclopedic knowledge of interesting facts about Panama doesn’t extend to the wild life– or geography for that matter—so, I’ve no idea what this raccoon looking creature is.
It’s a weekday so the passengers are few and we board the small ferry. November is the rainiest month in the rainy season, but just like the day before, the morning skies are clear and the blue at the very top stays that way for the ferry ride.
Here’s the plan. Board, jockey for seats, kick back and simmer in the anticipation of a triumphant return. No wait, do a timelapse, yeah, jump up and do a timelapse. I’m a slave to photography sometimes, but the chill factor is having an impact and I become more experimental than prudent. Still. Many, many stills to be exact.
Land ho!
Dolores and Maria are lingering on the boat after everyone else has disembarked. I’m anxious. I want to get checked in and..
Crack!
The most disturbing sound I’ve ever heard. I turn around and Maria is face down on the ground in a little cement trench.
Now, let’s back up. One of the first things I noticed about Panama City is that the sidewalks are in awful repair anywhere, but in the shinny new areas like Punta Pacifica. There are open holes of various sorts all over. I’m especially sensitive because once, while walking in my neighborhood in wonderful Atlanta, I stepped into a leaf covered water meter hole. I was fortunate that the only thing permanently damaged was my sense of security, and the assured gait of one who thinks that the city is going to keep those damn things covered. In Panama no such thought should or could exist. The evidence of the opposite is plainly to the contrary.
Maria found one of those places.
We rush to her side. Her mouth and nose are bloody and the sound of her hitting the ground is still in my heart. Fortunately —at least in that part of my mind that makes quick assessments—she’s not that badly hurt. There are no teeth or pieces of teeth on the ground, like when I was pitched over my bike handle bars 20 years ago. Maria Luisa was able to stand after a moment. A police woman comes over and escorts us to the island clinic. It was a short distance in retrospect, but at the time all sorts of thoughts were flooding my mind. My past experience was serving as a guide, so I wasn’t in an absolute panic but, I know that Maria is in disbelieving shock and considerable pain.
Thank God.
Thank God that the day before the U.S. celebrates Thanksgiving, there was a doctor on the island. Thank God a group of school children were getting dental and medical examinations. Otherwise, on this 2 mile long island of about 900 people there may not have been a doctor there at all.
Maria loosened a tooth and sustained abrasions around the nose, knees. A fat lip. None of the worst, horrible things that could have happened did. I’m more thankful than I let on; it’s hard to be thankful at that moment when your tooth wiggles back towards you throat.
Well, Forbes Magazine for one. And a pound of that Panama java sold for a record, 50 [ahem] non-star, bucks a pound at auction– a record. Retailing at about $100 a pound a cup can sell for nine dollars. It’s the famous and fabulous “Geisha” coffee from the Hacienda La Esmeralda. In international competitions Panamanian coffee growers trumped all others in 5 of the last 10 years. Not bad for a country with the smallest output of the coffee growing countries.
Let’s get out of the city and take a look.
Monday Nov. 7th
Maria Luisa and I leave town in the midst and mists of a downpour. The subsequent heavy rains exact a heavy toll on the eastern and Caribbean sides of Panama. We encounter heavy rains on our trip, but no flooding. We are enroute to the town of Boquete. Boquete means, literally, the hole or gap through which gold seekers went through looking for a route to the Pacific. Now you can find black gold, Panama tea if I can coin a phrase.
This became for me the most anticipated trip of the four-month stay. Originally I wanted to visit the popular beach region of Bocas del Toro. The “Mouth of the Bull” is a beautiful and well known tourist destination. Maria and I had also planned a resort type stay at Decameorn —an all inclusive, white sand beach resort built in a factory somewhere. I’m kidding, but with this truth to the edge—our stay in Panama really isn’t a vacation and with Mari’s guidance we have seen Panama from a truly…privileged…perspective. It’s just not the privilege of the rich and powerful.
When we were forced to make some cutbacks due to finances, I voted earl for Boquete, Chiriquí– coffee country. I knew from reading the labels on Starbuck’s bags that central America exports a lot of coffee, but I’d never seen Panama on a bag of beans. The news that great coffees come from Panama was surprising. Why isn’t this reflected in the coffee I’m buying in the grocery store. Or the bakery?
There is a lot of beautiful, if typical, mountainous countryside between Panama City and the other end of the country.
But the darkness ate all that up and our ascent to the highest peak of this nation was shrouded. Through David, from Bugaba, we drove for what seemed like miles up a straight smooth incline, one lane in each direction. Near the top just outside the town of Volcan the road begins to wind. We spent the night in that village-town at a relative’s home. The view in the morning, a crisp blue sky.
After a pretty good cup of coffee—No, Al, it’s not too strong! – we start out, leaving behind a dormant volcano– Panama’s highest peak– and all the sites there in Volcan, for Boquete.
For months now I’ve been driving around and looking up at these green hills that touch me in a deep, quiet way. Now we are in them. I know that I could spend days, if not weeks and months, learning to photograph and rhapsodize this undulating countryside.
Boquete, in a nut shell, is beautiful, beautiful and on top of that it’s good looking. Lots of English speaking U.S. ex-pats and a town that resembles Ashville, N.C., but smaller, say Helen, GA…. but bigger. I have two of my best eating experiences of the four month stay, but that’s another post.
Back to the coffee.
We decided on a tour [I love tours] of a coffee plantation or hacienda if you perfer. Frankly, I have mixed feelings about plantations. It’s a jagged word with a history of death and exploitation. So, or yet, I knew I wanted to see where coffee comes from, how it grows and the people that picked it; I want to know the roots of this liquid that is the world’s biggest legal [or other wise?] drug. Coffee and banana plantations have a history of bad labor practices, I’ve heard. And what’s this about Fair Trade? This is the beginning of the research.
The night before, however, our server at a fine eating establishment, Big Daddy’s, recommend a canopy tour. It sounded fun, zipping through the rainforest strapped to a guideline, but ultimately we chose coffee over being harnessed to a wire; we stayed true to our sociological roots.
I have to admit that I was won over, at least for now, by our guide and the people at Ruiz farm, finca in español.
When we arrived, a friendly woman struck up a conversation about photography moving from Spanish to English when she discovered my disability. We talked about the merits of small digital cameras and the like. Later, I found out that she was the daughter of the octogenarian founder, Señor Ruiz. Cool.
Our guide, Carlos, was awesome. He started with finding out where we came from and then warmed us up with jokes, reminding us—me, as I was the only U.S. citizen—that Central America and Central Americanos are just as American as the Estadounidenses.
What do you call someone that speaks three or more languages? Multilingual. What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks only one language? American [notwithstanding the above].
Carlos started out picking coffee beans on another finca as a teenager, became a taster, worked his way up. His English was excellent, he was multilingual and knew at least a handful of words in other languages. “I pick them up talking to visitors,” he said.
After a short drive we were in the middle of a coffee forest!
How do I express the feeling I had at the moment:
i bent the branches of coffee plants
their chubby arms grasping me
the thousands of grapes
and hidden secrets
podded
in plain sight
ngobe buglé german french american scandinavian
producers and drinkers
but
people
in and out of my sight
covered then displayed by a future’s worth
of black liquid.
dirty hands twisting
the fruit from the trees
of knowledge of good and evil
in a garden of shade tree
and citris.
~
A few coffee facts:
Panamá is at the same longitude and Boquete the same altitudes as the Ethiopian region where coffee originated.
Coffee is the seed of a fruit, a berry. Which, I can now attest, is sweet.
Coffee fruit and seed
The Ruiz farms use many natural methods to decrease infestations of bugs and parasites. They plant many fruit and other trees to encourage insect eating birds.
It takes a coffee plant 5 years before it produces viable beans.
Brazil is the largest coffee grower in the world, but produces a coffee that while more robust—because it can grow in rougher conditions—is considered inferior in taste to arabica coffee.
A few facts from that region of my mind—I’m pretty dang sure about, but I wouldn’t bet my camera on it—
To become a coffee taster you have to be able to distinguish 50 flavors. More challenging than you may think. Of the five people on the tour none of us guessed all of the simple tastes we were given as a test. However, as soon as Carlos said, “That’s orange,” or whatever, we all exploded with, “Oh yeah, that’s what it is!”
Coffee snobs regard dark roasted coffee [read, Starbucks] as burnt, though they will politely say that, well what you like is what’s important.
Picking the coffee is the most important/ difficult part of the process. [If you’re Central American.]
Roasting the coffee is the most important part. [If you are Italian].
The land available for coffee growing in Panama is shrinking because the land is being snatched up by developers…. That cut down the trees and make gated communities and quick cash.
Women are the fastest berry pickers; men can tote the biggest coffee sacks up and down the hills.
Espresso is an Italian method of making coffee fast by forcing steam through the ground beans. It was devised by a businessman who felt coffee breaks took too long!
Coffee workers, on the Ruiz finca, labor from 7 to 4, are paid by the pound, and work in the pouring rain in this rainy season, in this rainy rainy part of the country.
Child labor is legal– at age 14– but not when school is in session.
Every bean must be picked by hand, each berry reddens at it’s own pace.
There are a bunch of steps in coffee production – hey I was taking pictures, you want me to remember all that?
This much I remember:
Light roast
European
Fruity front of the mouth taste, sweetness
Medium roast
Latin
Less fruity, slightly smoky after taste
Dark roast
Italian
Back of the mouth, smoky taste
Burnt
French
Burnt, forget it
Well sort of remember. As I’ve indicated I’m a dark roast kind of guy and I’ve been missing out on French Roast. I know I’ve tasted French Roast before, but nine times out of ten I buy Sumatra, Italian or Espresso roast when I go to Starbucks. I’ll give the French another try, but I’m wondering if I haven’t, in my much less than scientific comparisons, already made the choice.
Truth be told there seem to be so many other factors that contribute to my coffee experience I wonder… I just wonder.
We tour the Ruiz finca and learn that they use a natural shade growing technique that is better for the land, preserves biodiversity, saves trees, and needs fewer or no chemicals.
It’s a holiday so no one has to work, but some do—you get paid by the amount of coffee you pick. Maria befriends a little girl to young to be employed, but who has accompanied her family to the slopes. “I’m picking up coffee,” she tells Maria. She is Ngobe Buglé one of the indigenous peoples native to Panama and no doubt is bilingual. Is is of the same ethnic group as our guide.
Her parents won’t get rich picking coffee. Despite the booming market for coffee, the commodity price has fallen in recent years and the surplus has gone to fill the pockets of the coffee roasters, middle men and others in the coffee producing chain. Even prices to Fair Trade farmers took a hit during the mid 2000′s. If anyone knows how Fair Trade farming affects the workers I’d like to know.
Our guide stresses this point– the labor is hard. You make money on the basis of being able to pick lots of beans during the harvesting season, carry heavy bags up and down the slopes during the rainy season. He talked about the money that workers could make but brain was filled to the rim with all kinds of facts and figures about the six steps in harvesting great coffee.
I’ve turned to the internet for some wage figures: $30 a day.
I am always astonished how few local farmers have ever tried it for a whole day or said that they can pick 30 – 50 pounds per day only. To get 200 pounds per day, one has to concentrate on each hand move, not waste time with breaks, plan your steps, maintain the same speed, not be afraid of spider webs or rain, and get into a certain groove.[2] – Joachim Oster
~
Whenever I buy coffee I buy a half-pound. It seems to me that after a week the opened bag of beans looses it aroma and flavor. Carlos strongly recommended that we freeze our coffee a rule that I’ve used for sometime now. Still there’s the consistency factor. Now I understand that due to factors like how much rain the coffee tree got, and a bunch of other factors, no two bags purchased at different time are likely to taste the same.
What he didn’t mention is that light is the other damaging element to the roasted bean. So why does Ruiz sell their beans in a clear bag? And why doesn’t that one-pound bag have air valve that Starbucks bags have and that he so clearly demonstrated during out tour.
Economics. At the end of our tour we got a handsome burlap tote bag filled with goodies. A whole pound of coffee! Much to my delight.That delight faded when I saw the same bag of coffee in the supermarket down the street priced at about $4.80. Still free coffee is…The price of the tour was $30 American.
The very last part of the tour was the coffee tasting test. We tasted light, medium and dark then light and dark again to re ally feel the difference. No milk, no sugar. No sugar! Hey wait a minute! I sort of get it but my take away is still this: I like dark roast—sweet–ened.
At some point I was ready to try a $9 cup of coffee just to say that I had. However, in he back of my mind I’m thinking that my thin wallet and empty stomach would better appreciate some really good pizza after this 3-hour tour. [Hey, I haven’t blogged about how good Panama pizza is so don’t sneer.]
Once I got back to the city, I counted out 48 beans, just as Carlos showed us, and used 4 ounces of water as instructed. I was not amused. I could care less if my weak coffee has a fruity front. Smoke it up baby!
I had been told that the famous Latin coffee is a light roast, but the coffee to water ratio is so far to the right that Cubans put a ton of sugar in each cup to compensate. That ain’t working.
Strong is one thing; dark roast is another.
Back to square one. Back to the CH Café where I’ve had the three of the best cups of coffee that memory can identify.
Note that memory for such things doesn’t go back too far. I’ve had a Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee blend but that was years ago. On the real, I know there are some factors that most gifted tongues and palettes can’t account for. Here are three factors that have nothing to do with coffee and everything to do with the experience:
Did I have coffee the day before?
Do I need to chase the cobwebs of insufficient sleep away?
Have I eaten something sweet before the first sip?
Will I have quiet alone time to contemplate, write?
I can contemplate the gift from our young friend. Can I ever give back a gift this precious?
Saga sounds sad. Roots was a saga. I have a small coffee saga. Or in Panamanian should I say saguita? This tale has a happy ending, Café Panameño.
In the coffee highlands of Panamá
Coffee is an integral part of my writing ritual. Here from an early journal entry:
6 September 2011
Another blue-sky morning. 7am nearly cloudless, 9am a heard of clouds grazes its way across the sky- field. Plump white and gray clouds– ever so slightly– a yellowish tinge where the sunlight strikes.
This morning starts coffee-less. Maybe later. I’m missing the coffee effect so noticeable in the U.S. The impact of caffeine hitting my system. Or is it the psychological effect or the “Starbucks” experience? What was the palpable cranial impact I craved, that jump start to creativity and poetry/ writing? I have not felt it, not even once, since I’ve been here.
I had a pretty good cup of coffee in the mall a couple of days ago. It was Duran coffee, the coffee in the pretty yellow bags, the coffee Mari Lu’s parents buy and make so strong in a on top of the stove percolator.
And:
7 September 2011
My first coffee high since I have been in Panama. I skipped the drink yesterday so today I can feel it. The beans, or rather, the roast is Italian, which I got from the New York Bagel. A pound’s worth of somewhat aromatic darkened beans shoveled into a brown paper bag. I put them in a plastic ice cream container and stashed them in the refrigerator.
It’s almost over now, the high. It peaked as I was listening to an Errol Morris’ doc on the guy with a high IQ.
I like a dark roast coffee– you know, burnt like the French and the Italians like it: Starbucks. In Latin America they like latin roast, go figure. Latin roast is a medium burn that still has some of the fruity-front-of-the-mouth flavor and not too much smoky aftertaste going down. And they like it strong! The coffee to water ratio must be insane.
Suffice it to say that for a month or more I’m drinking coffee that is less than inspiring. The coffee on the left.
Fortunately some one hips me to The New York Bagel, where I can not only get a U.S. style breakfast, but coffee closer to what I’m used to and buy it by the pound.
I’m willing to go to great lengths for a good cup of joe. I had a friend mail me a pound of Starbucks. It takes forever to get here and shipping it doubles the price. Add to that, I’ve always found that by the time I’m half way through a pound of whole beans the flavor weakens.
Then I read that in the highland regions of Boquete (a small town in the Panamanian province of Chiriquí) the most expensive coffee in the world is grown. How can that be? It’s grown for export. In Panama, where you can get a cup for 40 cents and the mean temperature is about 80 degrees Fahrenheit – who is going to pay $9 a cup?
Then Mari and I found this little sandwich shop in Casco Viejo that I reported on earlier. The best expresso in memory! CH Cafe.
So it was fitting that on the day we left town for Panama’s famed coffee growing regions I wanted to go there again. Trouble is that rush hour plus tropical down pour plus scarce to none parking in Casco Viejo doesn’t make a good combination. María Luisa drops me off a block from the restaurant and I go to find the little shop while practicing the phrase for purchasing a cup of coffee. Since we’ve been there before and made friends with the ever present barista, I want to say more than, “Café negro por favor.”
She hands me a small paper cup half filled. I’m perplexed. What did I say wrong? Still, I smile and leave my two dollars. Adding sugar in the car, I’m decidedly not happy. María Luisa is taking pictures and worrying about our late start– a six hour drive means we’ll be driving in the dark. Then a rain, appropriate to a country that boast a rainy season, descends. Now I’m taking pictures.
Now that’s tropical.
I insist that we drive by the cemetery at Santana for some pictures– hey, it was the Day of the Dead just four days ago, so there are bound to be some dead people that still want to be thought of and honored.
Nope. I’m not getting out.
Bridge of the Americas. The suspension bridge that holds the continent[s] together. Sort of.
Poor Mari. She’s dodging cats and dogs and I’m having the best cup of coffee in my life.
And we haven’t even left the city.
Coming soon, “The best coffee in the world,” part dos.
Panamanian flag on Ancon hill at half mast for The Day of The Dead
Sounds familiar and with good reason: The relationship between Panama and the United States of America goes back, before even Panama was a nation to itself. U.S. money built the first transportation system across the isthmus: a rail line that crosses the country.[1]
Panamanian independence day, Fiestas patrias, is celebrated for 2 days in the capital and accented on other days in various locals outside the city. Red white and blue flags from miniature to large have proliferated on buildings, windshields, handlebars, phone and electric poles.
Tomorrow is the day of the bands. My emphasis. Parades start at 8 am, move along two separate routs to accommodate all the bands– school and amateur, and keep cranking until 5pm…ish.
Weeks ago in a preview, Maria and I lost our minds taking pictures. Investigating a ruckus at the end of our block we stumbled upon the concurso de bandas [contest of the bands]. It was a parade that lasted six hours! Bands came from as far away as Colón and Chitré. What I witnessed was the most thrilling event since last year’s festival of the black Christ.
Same Song:
Band after band slowly made their way down Via Espana, at best a two-mile parade route. Almost without exception they played one patriotic song, over and over. And over. Not a bad thing though. I dug it. The melody was cool enough as the 4/4 rhythm but what they did with the horns—pardon the pun—blew me away.
There was one moment I remember in particular where the interleaving of harmonies made me think of the forays into sound that John Coltrane made on Ascension and Don Cherry funktfied on “When The Rain Comes.”
For me what really drove the whole experience over the top was the drums. That Beat. Then the icing.
Throw your drums in the air
Toss’em like you just don’t care
Perhaps folk who have grown up on college-ed at FAMU and other great marching bands will claim supremacy but anyway you look and listen to it you’ll have to give these bands props.
Of the dozens of bands that we watched and photographed only a few had more than 3 or 4 instruments. Chiefly, snare drums, bass drums, maybe some xylophones and bugles! Yep bugles.
Their uniforms were often just tee shirts but those brothers know how to wear hats. A la Pedrada—say it “a la pedra’a.” A sombrero with the front brim bent back.
Yes, I will be sportin’ one of those stateside.
[1] That’s almost right. There were roads that went coast to coast hundreds of years before the railway kicked off in the 1850′s.
This is our last day in the apartment, sigh.
