The first thing Carmen said to me in Honduras was, “Oh, you’re from the U.S.? Maybe I should join one of those caravans and go.”
She stepped up to the scale and poured her latest bag of coffee into a suspended bucket. The finca’s engineer called out its weight, and the manager noted her pay in the account book. He tipped the bucket and sent the red caturra cherries rushing into the darkness of the hold where they would be pulped and then dried in the sun below.
The next morning at dawn she taught me how to pick coffee cherries—grasp between thumb and index and twist so the tiny stem remains and produces again. I stopped once I realized I was ripping off stem after stem and just observed her. Perched on the slope of the mountain, she sped through the tree with total concentration, apart from the occasional shy smile when I snapped her portrait. At harvest peak, she can pick 30 lbs. a day and earn 73 lempiras for every bucket she fills, or $3, almost twice the average for a finca in the Botija Mountains. San Lazaro Coffee uses donations to pay a fairer wage and encourage women like Carmen to dream.
A dream inspired my great-great-grandfather Jürgen to move from Germany to Chicago 106 years ago. Why can’t Carmen?
San Lazaro is hurting right now and could use the business. Buy their coffee or donate—or at least follow them to see more of Carmen—here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sanlazarocoffee/
