Foreign Gratitude

Colombia
May 2018

The soles of Don Leo's leather loafers scraped along the sloped gravel road in the Colombian Zona Cafetera every day. There and back. But he only ever faced one direction: up. Once to ascend to town in the steamy mist of mid-morning sunshine to meet his guests. Then again shortly after, now backward, descending softly to the finca with the gait of an aged raconteur. Cracked skin, a sheathed machete, and his tender elderly footsteps speak silently; wisdom that can never be read.

This is the land he knows from childhood, the verdant hillsides where fraternal sweat of rural campesinos amidst fertile soils in the folds of the Colombian Cordillera nourishes crops better than any commercial concoction. For years Don Leo collected the shining ruby coffee cherries for a few coins. The boys drank and gambled away the arduous hours - and the earnings. And then when much of the world's coffee succumbed to freak frosts in Brazil, Colombian coffee was forever changed by external cash infiltrating Cafetera cajas. Small farms became large, workers became enslaved to foreign capital. Predictably, wages remained constant.

As the guerrilla infiltrated the coffee axis simultaneously with their own avarice, they easily captured the newly consolidated plantations. The choice was to flee for the jungle under the bloody embrace of narcos or risk death at the hands of warriors. For Don Leo, the pickings of jungle depressants replaced stimulants: the palms of his caffeinated hands now smelled of bush cannabis. But the returns weren't enough for the bosses. So the leaves became coca. He feared for his safety every day, but not as much as he feared certain death if he left. Baskets of leaves from first light to dusk fed the white powder addiction of New York bankers while yielding meager rations and destitute dormitories for the former Finca fraternity. Most curled on concrete floors and closed their eyes to forget; there was no rest.

Don Leo knew the chemist had malaria. From his hiding spot outside the jungle tent, Leo spied him sweating and suffering late in to the night concocting the precious powder. Don Leo watched secretly when he couldn't sleep, but when he suspected imminent death, he convinced him to take on an apprentice. His instinct was correct: when the chemist's fevered corpse was discovered, only Don Leo could prepare the essential potion and he was immediately promoted.

Steamy equatorial hours eased into months. Maybe years. But then an unusual plane flew overhead and little boxes dropped into the coca camp. Initial fear became tepid joy as the displaced campesinos rejoiced for their long-awaited cash. As the chemist, Don Leo's payment was larger, but it only brought anxiety. He felt unworthy, having betrayed his fraternal sufferers, so he struggled through another sleepless night. And then he fled in the moonlight.

He should be dead. But after two days in the jungle, he arrived in a small town away from the influence of the guerrilla and the coca. With his box, he opened a shop which would sustain him and his family for decades to come. Yet Don Leo’s emotions were compromised, ashamed for abandoning his fellow campesinos in the jungle and longing to return to the Cafetera for the life he had. His wife convinced him to sell the successful store to buy the finca he now calls home outside Buenavista. His hands sort coffee beans alongside his workers, and they all sleep in the same house and eat three simple meals together.

For two weeks I brought life to an English version of Don Leo's account for visiting tourists who didn't speak Spanish. And when there were no curious outsiders, I also sorted dried coffee beans, slurped sancocho, and chuckled with the workers. But I was still the visitor, the voyager interrupting others' lives in a foreign place. I give thanks. I’m uncomfortable receiving it. So when Don Leo said "gracias por visitarnos y ayudarnos a la finca," handing me a gift sack of his roasted coffee beans, my emotions, too, were foreign. His calloused hand shook mine as Spanish words tumbled from my mouth, uncertain. "You're welcome. The pleasure was mine to translate for you." But a swell of emotion drew away the discomfort and diminished my visiting heart, humbled but overflowing. As the moment drifted away, I turned and squinted in the fog, and I could no more distinguish between what we had given and received, as they were the same.

Don Leo's Colombian authenticity welcomed not only me but a skeptical world with distinct humility and resolution. It’s an authenticity far richer than artisan coffee, more personal than common hospitality. And for it, a foreign gratitude. An elusive joy of mutual thanks while traveling: our hearts beat fully, gratified as what we each offer melts as one in the Cordillera mist, and for a fleeting moment we are made whole. Maybe this, too, Don Leo already knows: a wisdom unwritten. So I continue to translate his story, to one person at a time.