SEEING MAX IN THE BACKYARD
By Bryan Parys
I look at the menu. I want everything.
There is a cookie at Bruegger's Bagels called The Everything Cookie: The perfect pick for those who don't know what to pick, the sign says. I'm not really in the mood for cookies, even if they have it all. I'd rather have a cup of coffee brewed so strong it could lubricate a truck engine. But I also want it to be fairly traded. The best, or the fairest? For some reason, I have a hard time coming up with an answer.
On the drive into Boston, Mass. this morning, my friend and I discussed our desire to eat and drink Fair Trade products whenever possible. I told him that here in Boston I feel like an outsider; that this isn't my backyard. Though I lived on the North Shore during college, I've been living back in my home state of New Hampshire for the past couple years. When I drive into Boston, I'm still taken by the cardiogram that the silvery buildings trace over the skyline--a pulse that I'm not in sync with.
Our plan today is to do a whiz-bang tour of Boston's fair trade offerings. My friend tells me that later we will be meeting Ben, a colleague of his, because, man, he knows his stuff when it comes to fair trade. As I think about this excursion in general there is something inside me that tenses up, but that also says, yes, the reality you're looking to get in touch with is here somewhere, as if, by the mere act of visiting, that'll be enough to clear my conscience. I'll go up to the barista and say, "One conscience, no guilt."
"That'll be a lifetime, plus tax. For here?"
"No. To go." I don't know how to stay. I don't even know what's happening in my own backyard, let alone backyards filled with coffee farmers who aren't getting their fair share.
: : :
Who is Max Havelaar?
I write this question on a slip of paper at a teashop in Boston, a few hours before we're supposed to meet Ben at Brueggers Bagels. I fold and drop the paper into the suggestions box. I am suggesting that they think about the question, as I am.
The real reason I write it is because I want to ask the cashier about fair trade-- how they feel about it, how the company deals with it. But I'm too shy. I'm the kind of guy who hasn't ordered pizza in five years because I'm frightened of calling Domino's. Despite my timidity, though, I want farmers to have fair wages. I want to help them by buying fair trade certified products, and I want to get others talking about it.
But try as I might, I can never see the farmers. It is hard to look past the foam in my latte and see the manual labor that helps me stay caffeinated.
I've read plenty of articles on Fair Trade, and I know that there are pros and that there are valid cons. But it is still something that is offered to a culture that seems to want everything, that even takes pride in the fact they are fueled not just by coffee, but the idea of coffee. How it tastes is not the most important factor. Coffee is in fact a symbol for how we live (Not before I've had my coffee), how we relate (Let's grab a coffee sometime), and how we think (Let's talk about it over coffee later).
Sometimes, I'm scared that we are so attached to the idea of coffee that we have no idea what coffee actually is.
: : :
I am in fourth grade when I first pay attention to the way my father makes coffee: he pulls a cold, red can of Folger's from the freezer, a cloudy film forming over the metal as the warmth of our house hits it for the first time. Peeling the plastic lid like it is a closed jaw refusing medicine, he grabs the tiny handle of the scoop and dumps a few tablespoons into an electric Mr. Coffee drip machine. He opens the back reservoir and then grabs the black handle of the carafe. He flips the lid open, again like a jaw, a marionette. He fills it with water from the filtering spigot that is attached to the faucet's nozzle. The morning sun cuts through the stream, turning the flow into liquid diamonds splattering off the thin glass bottom like jazz cymbals.
Once the water is in the reservoir, he places the carafe on to its base and in seconds, the diamonds hit the Folger's crystals, a muddy flow of solid-turned-liquid. My father will start his day with a couple cups at home. On his way to work, he'll join the ever-longer drive thru line at one of the Dunkin' Donuts locations in our small town of Laconia, New Hampshire, and pick up a medium hazelnut, just cream. When he finishes that cup mid-morning, he'll brew and drink another pot before coming home for lunch, and then the whole process starts over.
The coffee grounds look like dirt to me, so that's what I imagine they are, where they come from. When he let's me try a sip, the taste confirms my theory.
In middle school I learn that it is not dirt, but that it comes from beans. The lesson doesn't come from research, or school, or asking my dad, but from seeing a commercial for Colombian coffee. I do not know anything about Colombia, and assume that it must be a part of Mexico, since the spokesperson, a grinning Juan Valdez and his mule Conchita, look Mexican to my unadjusted New England eyes.
In the commercial, Juan is a real person, Conchita a real burro. The TV screen starts to morph, and his smile freezes as his face turns from flesh to the outline that is inked on the back of every can of 100% Colombian coffee. He is eternally happy, and he wants you to feel good about the idea of his coffee! So that you'll buy it! Drink it! And feel even better!
The message I get: coffee farmers are happy people who want to make us happy.
It is not until 2003, as a senior in college, that I learn that the 'beans' are actually seeds. I also see, for the first time, the term "Fair Trade." It is written on a poster above a table in the cafeteria. A friend of mine is sitting there, manning the booth, passing out leaflets, and with the gravest expression I've ever seen her wear, telling people to please drink the one carafe of fair trade-certified coffee that her club has managed to get College Food Services to offer students. Something about workers--I can only see Juan's smile--and unfair wages.
"It's just coffee, isn't it?" I say to her. "Just some addictive habit that people get headaches from when they don't drink it?"
No. It's not, she says, and all of a sudden seeds are not beans or dirt, but flesh working far away from my backyard.
: : :
"Who is Max Havelaar?" I ask Ben, about fifteen minutes into our discussion at Bruegger's about whether we can have fairness in our backyard.
"I don't know," he says laughing, tearing at a bagel and peanut butter sandwich. "Should I?"
Ben looks kind of like I imagine a monk would if he was living in Boston in 2010. From where he is sitting on the other side of the table, I can't see where his plain brown shirt ends, and I think about how it could be a tunic that runs down to sandals. His straight blonde-brown hair could have a bald spot for all I know. He is a monk who drinks flavored coffee and has made a vow never to be silent.
: : :
Ok; hold on.
Forget for a minute, or forever, that I was driving to Boston with my friend to find and sample the many fair trade products it has to offer. I mean really, framing our journey in such factual terms is just not actually going to motivate anyone to buy more fair trade products. Why would anyone listen to this New Hampshire native who once thought that everything south of the U.S. was Mexico?
Forget that I wanted Ben to be the "main character"--the moral center of the story that inspires action. I had thought that by describing his appearance his gestures, his background, that he would become flesh, real. Really though, he is just an idea with a voice, not a real person. When I spoke with him, I found myself feeling challenged and excited. How can I share this experience and make it feel real to the people that weren't part of that conversation? I have not met a coffee farmer yet, but at least I've met Ben, and we all need to start somewhere.
I could go into all the specifics of what he said--of the arguments he made, his ideas on fairness and justice, but hearing the facts isn't going to change anything. If facts could change us, then we wouldn't watch a sitcom after the news; we'd get up and make a donation, attend a city council meeting, post a comment on a blog, something, anything but change the channel.
Instead, imagine that my friend and I are walking into backyards, in search of two people that I've been trying to wrap my head around for a long time now, even when I didn't know I was looking for them: Juan Valdez and Max Havelaar.
: : :
All of this is making me very, very tired.
Ben is talking and I am yawning. The drawing in of a warm breath tugs on my throat like my brain is an amputee doing yoga. Folds of grey matter flex and release, the phantom pain being the memory of holding something important in my arms, something that can make sense of fairness. But it feels as if an old landmine has blown off the arms of my memory. It isn't fair. Is it fair to only understand fairness as something lost, something we are constantly trying and failing to regain?
"Sorry I'm yawning so much," I say, looking down. "Don't take this as a sign I'm not listening."
"Yeah, don't worry about it. A professor of mine once told me that yawning means your brain is trying to take in a lot of new ideas and make sense of them all at once."
In that case, I don't think I've stopped yawning since we started talking, and I wonder: what will it take to get everyone yawning?
: : :
As is no surprise, Juan Valdez is not a real person, and in fact has been 'played' by three different actors since the campaign's inception in 1959. The first Valdez, Jose F. Duval, was Cuban, not Colombian, and moved to New York to become an opera singer. Though the next two actors were Colombian, Juan's voice has always been that of Norman Rose, a native of Upper Nyack, New York. The farmers now have a face, but we still have control of their voice.
And Max Havelaar? Also not real. He is the main character of a Dutch novel written in 1860 by Multatuli about the injustices of the trading policies of the Dutch East India Company, particularly regarding their abusive colonization of Indonesia and their crops such as tea and coffee.
But the illusion continues--Multatuli is not even real. Well, to a point. It is Latin for "I have suffered greatly," and was the pen name that--finally, a real person--Eduard Douwes Dekker used to write about the travesties he witnessed as he worked for the Dutch government.
The flesh-and-blood Dekker did everything he could to protest the inhumane treatment of the colonized countries he worked in, but all it really did was keep him in poor standing with the powers-that-be. So, exhausted by the inaction of the real world, he created another one, made up names and wrote Max Havelaar: or, The coffee auctions of the Dutch trading company. The result was not so much literary as it was revolutionary--mobilizing a movement that eventually broke the colonial chain around Indonesia's neck, and later, even inspired decolonization in Africa. Beyond that, Max is seen, as the progenitor of the fair trade movement. His legacy lives on in the name of the first official fair trade certification initiative, founded in 1988, and just happens to be Dutch: Stichting Max Havelaar, or, The Max Havelaar Foundation.
This kind of change is unreal.
: : :
Back at Bruegger's, this detail is not fictional, but feels unreal: Ben says that, unfortunately, "The justice we see actually happening around us is always market- driven." Through the window behind him, I see a man in jeans, sweater and collared shirt pushing a cart of groceries that is so full I imagine he had to glue every item in place. I can only assume that there is coffee in that cart. Maybe as much coffee as my dad--a symbol of the American workforce--needs to buy to keep him going. "Consumer behavior is always at the center of these kinds of things," Ben continues.
Attached to the bulging cart are three enormous purple balloons. Buying fair trade won't take care of everything, but it will start turning on its head the ridiculous parade of consumer behavior. "It's about making that step to live in tension." The man and the cart pass behind Ben's head and emerge out of his left ear. Here it is, I think. That ridiculous parade and Ben's thoughts are right on top of each other. I can see the tension behind Ben, in the backyard, and he has no idea.
"Is there anything else I need to know?" I ask Ben.
"Probably lots of things," he says, the man across the street popping the trunk of a gleaming automobile.
I want to say that I'm making this up--that the grocery cart is just a metaphor for decadence, that Ben is just a symbol of anti-decadence, my version of Max. But this isn't fiction, so let's be fair and call it like it is.
It's all happening. Right in our backyard.