A Dawn and a Day

I'm enchanted by the mornings here. As the first semblence of light kisses the distant hilltops I can't help but to feel refreshed. Dawn creeps slowly, awakening the crow-like black birds whose song I've dearly missed. If any one sound can so graciously transport me back to Guate and Mexico it is these charming melodies.

Smoke rising from every delapitated house casts a blue haze on all that I gaze and ponder. It’s chilly this morning or, “there’s lot’s of cold,” as it is described here. These “lot’s of cold” mornings seem to be a portent for “lot’s of hot” come mid-day.

We picked coffee yesterday for the first time this year. It wasn’t long before I was reminded of how bloody hard the work is around here…and picking coffee is the easiest of it all. I was reminded how intense the sun can be—even with winter solstice just three weeks away.
Yet with all the ever-present obstacles to comfort, yesterday in the day in the life a campesino, was smiles and laughter, pride and euphoria, relief and a genuine sense of satisfaction. For yesterday, 29 of November, the life blood of La Florida came lumbering in on the backs of women, children, and men like it had never come before. This day amid the peak of their third coffee harvest, after hours of hot and humid work, brought a high…and unspoken elation that I had never witnessed in them. It was as if their long race of marathon, after marathon, after triathlon had finally come to an end…Yet today, as I’m all too aware, they’ve begun again to harvest the life blood in the hope that this day, like yesterday, will lift them…if only a little…from dirt floors, crumbling walls and rusty roof-tops.
--ryan