I drink a lot of decaf these days. I used to have a very powerful caffeine addiction. In my twenties I was averaging between ten and twenty cups a day. In my thirties I gradually scaled down to six, then in my forties four cups of Joe a day. Or maybe the mugs became bigger and the coffee stronger. Several times I tried to quit, to kick the habit, often with several months of successful abstinence. I even had a couple of friends who were determined to aid my deliverance from the Bean. The two ladies, both older than me would admonish me about the dangers of caffeine and the evils of addiction. One of them, a lady the same age as my father even gave me cheap decaffeinated coffee for my birthday. Twice. I winced, then I laughed and let the bags of fake coffee get lost in the nether regions of my fridge freezer.
Even in the nineties it was difficult to find decent decaf. I never was a huge tea drinker and with or without the happy, addictive little kick, I love the taste of coffee which I almost always have black and bitter... just like life. One day, in 1992 I was offered a free sample of decaf espresso. It was an Americano. It was delicious. I would never have known the difference had the young man on the sidewalk in front of his café not told me. I wasn't won over. I was still addicted to caffeine. It was my coke, but cheaper and not as hard on the heart. And legal. And, as I already mentioned, cheap.
I already had a peripheral awareness of some of the ethical issues around coffee. A cash crop, occupying thousands of square miles of arable land that could instead grow food in poor countries, harvested by poorly paid workers labouring in harsh and nasty conditions, and that by purchasing and drinking their product I was implicit in the exploitation and abuse of the same workers employed by the plantations and unable to provide decently for themselves or their families. I continued to drink it. I was addicted. I knew better, and I didn't care, or I didn't care enough.
Finally, six years ago, I was challenged by one of my supervisors to give up the habit. I don't think he was concerned about my health, or about the poor pay and abusive treatment for the workers on the coffee plantations. He did say that it was a matter of being a good role model for our clients (I work in the mental health field and some of my professional hours are spent in coffee shops with clients.) I reacted by telling him off, partly because it was none of his business (true) and also because fully leaded coffee is usually the cheapest item on menu in coffee shops (also true) and we are given a very limited hospitality budget for our clients. But I also did not want to give up my vice. I had no appetite to endure a week of headaches and poor sleep only to satisfy the expectations of my boss.
By that time I was also more politically aware and ethically concerned about coffee and for several years already tried to buy only fair trade coffee, even if it was expensive. I was also getting tired of buying it. Every three weeks I would exhaust my pound of fair trade coffee, and then I would have to look for a place to purchase my next fix. It became laborious. I was starting to feel like a junkie. I was beginning to hate myself. I carved myself out a plan and two weeks to quit. I tapered off, gradually, for a week. It still wasn't easy and the dreaded headaches and chronic grogginess soon came. I suffered it out, endured it, and took exquisite care not to let my prolonged pangs of withdrawal impact on my interactions with my clients. I began buying only decaf, usually Americanos, since drip decaf wasn't always available in cafes, and sometimes it was a bit expensive. I was able to cover the cost within our budget, but often just barely. It was a challenge. I noticed that I was not feeling any better. My sleep patterns remained as inconsistent as ever. My nerves didn't improve noticeably and I remained just as irritable and hyper-sensitive to noise as ever. I also wasn't spending as much money and not needing to go shopping for my fix every three weeks freed up my time somewhat.
And then I discovered fair trade cocoa. I bought it at the Ten Thousand Villages. It replaced my coffee habit. Every day, I would make two and a half big mugs of cocoa, from scratch, made with two percent milk, brown sugar and butter. My mornings, which often began very early, were long and leisurely, and I spent them reading the Globe and Mail from cover to cover and sipping rich fair trade cocoa, often enjoying the second, third and even the fourth mug cold with ice.. How could it be better. I gained forty pounds (I have since, six years later, lost twenty of them, in the past seven and a half months, since giving up cocoa. I have also quit reading the Globe and Mail). I sometimes miss my morning cocoa, and the warm fuzzy feeling that my biweekly purchase is helping plantation laborers in Peru send their children to university. Well, no one helped me finish college but hey you're welcome. Have it on me. I am also saving tons of money through these recent abstinences and soon will be vacationing for a month in Mexico. I have not given up chocolate and I still have my chocolate chips to snack on during the evenings. The chocolate isn't fair trade and I try not to think of child laborers being flogged and beaten on cacao plantations in the Ivory Coast. However, I earn a very low income and have since conceded that fair trade appeals to a niche market of folk every bit as highly incomed as highly principled and highly educated. I don't expect this is going to let me off the hook entirely.
In the meantime the coffee industry is not going to suffer for my limited participation. Cafes and coffee shops are still springing up like toadstools after a spring shower and I don't wish to bore anyone to excess about Starbucks. I actually was a regular customer at the first Starbucks that opened in Vancouver, in the Waterfront Station downtown. It was a lovely little place with friendly and attentive staff and the most delicious coffee from all over the world. My favourite will always be the dark French, so rich, musky, sweet, bitter and earthy. Starbucks opened a new location on Robson Street, and I soon lost interest. I didn't know why at first. I sensed coming from Starbucks a dark, sinister, but sexy and seductive energy that for me was very hard to resist. Like their dark French. I became soon aware that they were an American chain, a huge and obscenely wealthy corporation with a scandalous lack of scruples (well, they are a corporation). I heard about how they sourced their beans, caring not, well, caring not a bean how they impacted or impoverished their producers. So I began to favour and patronize local and independent coffee shops. I have since heard all kinds of conflicting information about Starbucks, good and bad, that some of their beans are fair trade, that not really and this is for p r, that their staff are highly paid and well treated for baristas, but not really, and that they encourage recycling of the many paper and plastic cups that would end otherwise in the landfill. For years I bravely held out, refusing to take clients to Starbucks even if it was the only gig in town. I have since relented a little. If the client really wants to go there, if it is the only, or by far the most convenient option then we will sit and chat in the local Starbucks, just a half block away from the next local Starbucks. I always order the same thing, a two shot decaf Americano (they are always but always delicious), in warm weather iced, and always in a real ceramic mug or a real glass made of glass. I never order in Starbuckese, which is a very sorry sounding dialect of corrupted Italian. This often confuses the bejesus out of the baristas who don't have a clue how to make a double shot Americano in any size mug if I ask for it in precisely those words. And if they mistakenly try to serve it in paper or plastic I ask them to repour it into a reusable vessel and ask them please and kindly reuse the paper and plastic as well. ah...shcadenfreud.
However, on my own time, I will never be caught dead or alive in one of those places.
I am sure the coffee industry will continue to grow. And I must admit that there is a unique loveliness about coffee plantations. I have visited a few in Costa Rica, and when no one was looking even picked a few beans to nibble on. The green beans themselves are somewhat dreadful but the red fruit covering is sweet and lovely. I have a friend in Costa Rica who actually gave me a tour of his coffee estate and explained to me the whole long and complex process of hand picking and harvesting the beans, selecting them, curing them, drying them, sorting and roasting them. He said he withdrew from the collective, which was fair trade because he wanted a more profitable enterprise with free lance pickers. When I asked him how well he paid them he became strangely quiet then moved on to the next subject.
I have read that we can thank coffee for Western Civilization as we now know it. Apparently, before the explorers brought coffee back to Europe everyone drank beer which kept them half stupid and unable to think their way through a wet paper bag. Then coffee arrived, coffee houses opened everywhere in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Vienna and Voila! Everyone was hyped up on caffeine and they all had ideas of how they were going to change, save, conquer and reform the world.
I will not speak here about people who squat for hours on end hogging tables in cafes throughout the land. Rest assured, this blog is being written entirely from the comfort of my own dear little apartment.
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