Just Coffee

I recently met with two city administrators from the Ainaro side of the Madison Ainaro Sister City Alliance (MASA) here in Timor-Leste.

Tear gas. Damn that hurts!

The following is a transcription of my Haitian diary:

6Nov.

Disembarking the plane at Port-au-Prince I resist the urge--which I
always get exiting a plane down the stairs onto the tarmac--to wave
Jacki Onassis style. This airport is more like a greyhound bus
station with UN soldiers from Croatia, Brazil, Belize, and all over.
Next we race frantically through the traffic standing in the back of a
truck with all of the luggage. Racing, wind in my eyes, smells. The
electricity is out everywhere except where people have generators.
It's dark and we're going top speed, moving within a couple of inches
of the colourful bus on our right. There are no seats in the bus,
everyone stands, and pedal to the metal. Up dark roads the headlights
reveal canteens and snack shops open in the walls along this curving
street. Patrons standing around, but no electricity. No sidewalks
walls like a fortress line the streets, people, trucks swerve, honk.
This guest house is quite nice. They have a generator. And a pool.
And a gate. We honk about 30 times and someone finally opens up. They
have food. Beans and rice. They have two guards. The guards sit in
lawn chairs. They both have machine guns in their laps. Pointed
either direction. One of them has a clock radio, blinking 12:00,
trying to tune in a station. It is plugged into a 50' yellow extension
cord. Reminds me of Just Coffee before the fire marshal came by (the
extension cord, not the guns).

I am 28 years old today.

In the community of Santa Anita de la Union in Guatemala there are fifteen young people who would like to attend high school in January. The school is located in a city fifteen miles down the hill from their village-- too far to walk..

In 2006 Just Coffee was asked to help the people of Santa Anita find a bus. We enlisted the help of students at Madison's East High School (MESFAP) who answered the call by raising over $1500 to help with the purchase, maintenance, and transport of a bus.

We thought we had found a bus last month when a generous donor offered a used vehicle, but upon inspection it was deemed to not be “road worthy” for the demands of Guatemalan driving.

If you have access to a good bus, or know someone who does, please contact us at info(AT)justcoffee(dot)net. If all works out well we would need to have it in Guatemala by January 1, 2008.

Do it for the kids!!!

Dili's first rains of the wet season have arrived! Thankfully this brings a short respite to the oppressive heat for however short a time. I heard it speculated by some that this year the wet season would come late but much to everyone's pleasant surprise, it is right on time. As the rains come more frequently over the next month the hillsides around Dili, and all over Timor-Leste, will change from barren brown to lush shades of green.

ROMIT Group:

From the vegetable seeds that we have received, we organized ourselves in order to prepare a site as a vegetable garden.

1. First we cut/turn the earth.

2. Second we fence the site.

3. Third we plant the vegetable seeds.

Somehow I managed to get through each of the thirteen districts, or states, of Timor-Leste in just one week! Three weeks ago I traveled first through the western and central districts to the towns of Maliana, Suai, Same, Aileu, Gleno and Licquica. I then traveled through the eastern districts to the towns of Manatuto, Baucau, Los Palos, and Viqueque. To top it all off I was helicoptered to the remote district of Oecussi before coming back to settle in Timor-Leste's capitol, Dili. It was an exhausting whirlwind trip that I wouldn't want to repeat in such a short amount of time, but also a great experience.

Hand woven Timorese bags

I have just received 50 hand made Timorese bags woven from locally grown palm fiber. These bags were woven specially for Just Coffee by a group of fifteen women who call themselves Grupo Naroman. 'Naroman' means shining or shining light.

Grupo Naroman was formed in early 2007 after last year's crisis as a way to work together to find a market for their products. Previously the women weavers had been individually selling their products to people in a nearby community who were paying them a low price and then going on to resell the product in Dili or elsewhere.

Weekend in Turiscai

Part 1:
Last Friday night we came on a most insane adventure to visit and stay with a friend on his coffee farm. I have traveled to isolated places in Timor-Leste before. Between places here and areas in Central America, I have been on bad roads more than enough times to make my stomach churn just thinking about it. I have never, however, been on a road like the one that we traveled on last Friday night.