Guatemala was excellent, now finals

The trip to Guatemala was very suc­cess­ful and I feel great about the work I did. I took por­traits of fair trade cof­fee farm­ers in four com­mu­ni­ties in west­ern Guatemala over the week of Thanks­giv­ing. The grass­roots devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion Cafe Con­cien­cia works with these com­mu­ni­ties to strengthen their cof­fee roast­ing projects, eco-tourism pro­grams, basic infra­struc­ture, and a vari­ety of social pro­grams. The pho­tographs will be used to redesign the cof­fee pack­ag­ing and the Cafe Con­cien­cia web­site. With redesigned cof­fee pack­ages, Cafe Con­cien­cia will pro­mote the community’s cof­fee in the United States and else­where. It is rare for farm­ers to con­trol the entire pro­duc­tion process, from plant­ing the seeds to pack­ag­ing the final prod­uct. They have unprece­dented con­trol over their pro­duc­tion and in many cases earn bet­ter prof­its. These ben­e­fits improve the community’s oppor­tu­ni­ties for orga­niz­ing around gen­der issues, bet­ter school­ing, and polit­i­cal rights, among other things. I had a great time with the farm­ers and am thrilled to con­tribute to the project.

Even though I came back exhausted, it was well worth it. Now, I am in the thick of finals. Just two more weeks… My ini­tial plans to go to India in Jan­u­ary have fallen through due to com­pli­ca­tions with the trans­la­tion. Seems that Adobe doesn’t have very good sup­port for the Devani­gari alpha­bet, which Nepali is writ­ten in. Lovely. We’ll get it worked out, and I’ll be in India in May.

Here are some pic­tures from Guatemala.