expats and xela

Wednesday morning we met Mike at his coffee shop, Crossroads Cafe, which is also his house and where he roasts the coffee. It's a tiny place, more like a hallway, with flags from all over draping the dark wood ceilings, photos, maps, license plates, and old random coffee adds covering the walls in an organized chaos. He made us the most delicious Mocha in Guatemala and his wife brought us warm oatmeal cranberry scones for breakfast.
We came in expecting a totally different talk than the one we got. He goes around the world looking for quality coffee produced organically and fairly, meaning where the workers are paid fairly and where their rights are respected. He decided to come to Guatemala to follow his dream: create a coffee shop in a country that has time, where relationships can be made, and where he can get his coffee from people he has a real friendship with. He used to have a coffee shop in San Francisco, but he got tired of the US. Everything and everyone goes too fast, everyone is alone because they are so busy doing so many things and dread seeing friends even because they just don't have time. He loves being a barista and holding a coffee shop because of the 3 minute snip-its of peoples' lives he gets to see everyday, where baristas and customers build a relationship over 3 years of a long conversation broken up into 3 minute bits.
Fair Trade can be a marketing tool and abused to make more profit rather than giving fair wages. 16 cents out of every dollar we buy of a coffee cup in the States actually goes back to the workers who pick, dry, and roast the coffee: the 84 cents go to the exporting and distribution companies. Mike exports in a very particular way; he packs suitcases full of coffee for people who want to bring it home, we actually met a guy, a teacher, coming to pick up his suitcase. There are dangers to his job, when he goes to get his coffee in the farms, he takes different routes and roundabout ways to avoid robberies and ambushes, because he's already been threatened at gun and knife point, his cafe has been broken into and his roaster damaged. He roasts his coffee in a big roaster and his entire family participates in the process, from roasters to baristas. Here is his site that explains more about what he does: crossroadscafepana.com
But instead of telling us about the fair trade coffee world, what his job entails, his thoughts on fair trade and the work conditions of coffee farmers, he decided to tell us what he's trying to transmit to his children as a father. He really thought about what we could learn from him and what he had to give, and he chose to impart what he has learned through his many adventures and bumpy life path, which is that the most important thing in life and in the world is to have meaningful, inspiring, real relationships with people. The real wealth in life and true success is to be able to "call a friend at 2 in the morning and be able to open up your heart to them because they will listen", and will help you out when you're in need with no expectations of getting something in return. Basically, he wanted us to come away with 3 lessons: build meaningful relationships in life because those are what really matters, follow your dreams and have fun because you don't know when your time will be up, and remember that the little things like a smile matter the most and can save peoples' lives-you don't have to find the cure for AIDS to make a difference in the world.
He was a very sweet and passionate guy who has learned a lot from life and hardships, and after meeting Keith, Andrea and him it made me realize how interesting the expat community must be here, and worth meeting, just as much as campesino guatemalans.

We left Mike and took multiple crazy bus rides that involved people giving us the wrong directions or never giving the complete answer about the bus's destination, but eventually we got to Xela with rather smooth switches and with all our stuff. Xela is the second biggest city in Guatemala with a population of a whopping 250,000. I didn't remember it being as cold as it is, it gets to about 7 degrees celsius at night and early mornings, and people are wearing winter hats and gloves here. Adelaide's apartment is our home base and is big and beautiful and, most importantly, has a gas-heated hot water shower! I'm excited to start living here, get to know the city well and have favorite spots. Adelaide brought us to an amazing fair trade coffee and chocolate place where they sell macatella, which is a chocolate and macadamia nut spread. They also have cheap snacks and avocado-orange smoothies, which I recommend trying at home, so I know I'll be spending quite some time there! But before settling in Xela, meeting our families on Sunday, and starting our internships on Monday, we are taking a weekend trip to a finca. We were originally planning on going to Finca Nueva Alianza but protests have been causing road blocks so we looked up other options and decided to head to Finca La Florida on Thursday instead...