Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Café Bavaria shook me. I realized I had just been playing at being a radical with Cody.
Street takeovers, die-ins, pussy-power marches; they were theater.
There was no real jeopardy. Even an arrest was something to brag about, not something to fear.
Here, it was different. Here, there were consequences.
I couldn’t erase the vision of Dona Belén facing off with the guard.
When I came to Costa Rica, I had been running away. But now I had to choose—what was I running to? And if this new life required me to make sacrifices, to put myself in danger, would I have the courage?
After a restless night, I woke up a little calmer. But then I remembered the kiss . And the next kiss. And the lingering, amazing, frustrating kiss Adrián had given me when he dropped me off last night. My vow was going the way of the dodo bird.
I noticed my face felt hot, so I checked it in my phone camera.
Oh. Wow. This was not excitement. This was a very interesting sunburn.
Perhaps from driving with the window down while we went east?
But no matter; no one besides my host family was going to see me in person for a few days.
I’d mainly be researching farms and homestays, and constantly checking news sites to make sure no old ladies from Nicaragua had been harmed.
I made a note in my phone to figure out the best way to get out Dona Belén’s story.
As I was dressing, my phone beeped—miraculous! The signal in my bedroom was crap. I opened my email.
TO: Dee Blum
FROM: Matías Khalil
SUBJECT: Professor Ramírez
Hi Dee. Hope your conventional farm visit went well and you got to peek behind the curtain.
With your super sleuthing skills, I’m sure you did.
I wanted to let you know that I’ve taken the liberty of setting up a meeting for you with Professor Ramírez on Tuesday at ten at the university.
I was Zooming with him this evening and he was very keen to meet you when he heard about your Living Wage League work.
He loved your direct action where you glitter-bombed the Fine Hotels board to symbolize how the hotel rains cash while the laborers struggle to make ends meet. I have to agree; it was very creative.
Hope you are rested and ready to fight the good fight!
Wait, how did he know about the glitter bomb? It was true, I had helped Cody procure the glitter. But going to the craft store and taking photos were the extent of my contributions. And what was with the “sleuthing skills” thing again? It’s like he had some sort of alternate resume for me.
But more importantly... Tuesday at ten?! That was in three hours! When had he written this? I checked the time stamp. Last night . Now my geometric sunburn was of slightly more concern. Meeting my idol was nerve-racking enough, but looking like a cubist painting to boot?
TO: Matías Khalil
FROM: Dee Blum
SUBJECT: Re: Professor Ramírez
Hello Matías ? —
I did make it to the conventional farm, or as I call it, Corporate Hell.
I managed to find the real fields and interview one laborer.
But I didn’t get very far, or take many photos, before getting chased out by the guards.
I don’t know how you found out about my sleuthing creds but I think your source is unreliable. I am a spying disaster.
Thank you for setting up a meeting with Professor Ramírez. He is my hero. So much so that I might be hyperventilating. And thanks for your support. As you can see, I’m going to need it.
I raced downstairs, where Eva, Luis, and Abuelita were having breakfast. When Eva saw my face, she dropped her coffee cup on the counter. “ Dios mío ,” she said. “You look like...” She hesitated. What did I look like?
“ Una turista gringa ,” said Abuelita. “Who forgot to put on sunblock.”
“ Ay ,” said Luis, briefly looking up from his newspaper. “She looks like a tomato.”
“You can’t let Adrián see you like that,” said Eva.
“Who’s Adrián?” asked Luis, looking back up from his newspaper. Oh no. My host dad did not get to weigh in on my potential dating choices.
“Is he Catholic?” asked Abuelita.
Eva gave Abuelita a dark look, then opened the sliding glass door of the kitchen and gestured for me to follow her to the patio. She cut off a leaf from an aloe plant and handed it to me. “Here.”
“Here what?”
“Squeeze the plant. Put the gel on your face.”
Wow. How DIY. After thanking Eva and slathering the aloe on my face, I said goodbye to Abuelita, prayed to my guardian angel like she taught me, and unbolted the three deadbolts on the front door.
I walked outside and was immediately pleased.
People think: Costa Rica, Central America, hot.
But that just shows you how little most people know.
San José was in fine temperate form this morning, with fleecy clouds lazing in the horizon and the sun giving one great big wake-up yawn.
I exited the gates of my citadel, exalted in the balmy air, and set foot on the wet spongy ground outside the house.
My only companions on the road out of Carmen toward the Fatal Water Tanks were chickens and feral dogs.
I carefully negotiated the potholes, mud patches, and marshes that lined the road in lieu of a sidewalk, praying constantly that an errant taxi would not whack me from behind and send me airborne and mangled into Guadalupe.
When I got to the water tanks intact, I said goodbye to the rising sun and turned right, starting my descent into Sabanilla.
The thing I couldn’t get over in Costa Rica was the sky.
It was closer, it really was, closer and bigger and heavier, and right here on the road down to Sabanilla was where it was closest. When it rained, the giant gray clouds seemed only twenty feet up from the tops of the tin roofs.
When it was clear, the blueness had a thickness to it that suggested it was an object like any other, something you could hold in your hand, pinch, feel.
So as I walked down the steep hill to Sabanilla, I felt like if I slipped and fell down the slope, I would be caught by the giant blue arms of the sky.
Forty minutes, six piropos , and three perilous road crossings later, I was on campus.
The University of Costa Rica looked like a typical Southern Californian suburban community college.
Squat nondescript buildings, open spaces, large trees, and lots of benches.
The main difference was that every tree had a family of parakeets and a resident sloth.
There was also a brook snaking through the middle of campus, with a sign claiming it was a Geological Study Site.
The sign reminded us to protect our natural resources, but it wasn’t fooling anybody, that sucker was polluted as hell.
I crossed the brook, entered the Social Sciences building, and went to the third floor. There was a plant-filled anteroom where a voluptuous middle-aged assistant with bright-blue eyeshadow and turquoise pumps was filing her nails.
“Dee?” she asked. I nodded. “Go in, corazón . He’s waiting for you.”
I stepped into his office; all the windows were open. It was like entering a wind tunnel—literally and figuratively. It blew me away in the same way that Capitol Hill blows away twelve-year-old poli-sci nerds who want to be president. This is the intimidation that comes with the desire to emulate.
Hanging behind an enormous oak desk and surrounded by a blood-red frame was a life-sized poster of Che.
Che was looking straight at me with that mocking, seductive, mysterious smile.
The smile that made you wonder—was he a revolutionary hero or a cold-blooded murderer?
Was it possible to be both? Surrounding Che were thousands of newspaper clippings vying for attention and failing miserably.
But the most impressive piece of furniture was the professor himself.
At six foot four, Professor Ramírez dwarfed everything in the room.
His colossal frame was made even more intimidating by his inky eyes, set in stark contrast to his flowing white beard and cascading hair. He looked like an out-of-water Neptune.
“ Bienvenida, joven ,” boomed the living statue in Spanish, sending vibrations over me.
He crossed the room and I could almost see plaster flaking off him as his muscles rippled under his clothes.
He had to be somewhere in his seventies, but he was in incredible shape.
I held out my hand and he shook it, American style.
I felt like I had just got my hand jammed in a car door.
“Sit down,” he said in Spanish. I acquiesced. “I’m not sure what Matías has explained to you, but my goal is to get all coffee produced in Central America fairly traded and sustainably produced by 2030.”
“That’s ambitious.”
“That’s just the beginning. Next is chocolate, then textile production. You’re aware of the slow fashion movement?”
I self-consciously tugged at my Old Navy shirt. “I am.”
“Obviously, coffee has to be first, it accounts for eleven percent of our exports. So I’m documenting all of the cafetales in Central America that produce their coffee under fair trade and organic standards.
But coffee is also important symbolically.
Did you know that wherever coffee has been introduced, it has been a harbinger of revolution? ”
“No.”
“There’s something mind-expanding about coffee.
When people begin to think, they become dangerous.
And when they think in groups—in coffeehouses—they become powerful.
It was from Café Foy in 1789 that the French Revolution began.
It was in Boston coffeehouses in 1773 that the Boston Tea Party was plotted.
A drop in coffee prices sparked the Brazilian revolution of 1930.
Coffee, my dear, is the world’s most radical drink. ”
Wow. I thought it helped me study for exams—I didn’t realize it could take down governments.