Coffee picking in Guatemala

I clutched my backpack on my lap as the camionetta, or “chicken bus” as it is known to travelers bounced down winding mountain paths at alarming speeds, swerving to miss deep potholes and three-legged dogs. On either side of me were women dressed in traditional Mayan huipiles, modest cotton shirts and ankle-length skirts, boldly embroidered with birds and flowers whose arrangement told the story of their village. One woman gave me a toothless smile and we spoke of the presidential elections. I was glad to have the support of these locals – literally – as the force of their bodies pressed against mine kept me in a seated position, but hovering in the air in what was actually the aisle of the bus. We were like sweating chorizo packed into the stalls of the markets, but the ride was cheap, if not short.
Two hours later, sweaty and sore from crouching, I was dropped off in the marketplace of the tiny town of Columba. I squinted in the summer sun, searching for the white pickup truck I had been told could shuttle me to Santa Anita la Union. At the farm I met Mariola, the maternal charge of the family I was designated to eat and work with. She walked up the rain washed path with four boys at her heels. “Lista?” she asked me. And like that, we walked back to her small concrete home and sat around a table sharing introductions and a humble breakfast of hand-patted tortillas, syrupy bananas and nutty coffee.
After washing up, I strapped a plastic basket to my waist with a rope and we ventured into the dense expanse of green. Above and around us, banana trees lazily waved good morning. Tangled undergrowth teeming with lizards and beetles tugged at my legs like water as we pushed deeper and deeper into the farm. Finally we reached the coffee trees, tall and gangly like teenage boys. I watched as Mariola deftly bent their necks to her face and stripped handfuls of red-ripe berries from their limbs. “La vida es café” she said. It was lesson one.