Inside the head of a coffee junkie
It’s a little past 11 p.m. and I’m patiently waiting for the clock to strike midnight, the signal of a new day. I’m sitting at my desk staring at my new ceramic tumbler from the United States, debating whether or not to brew myself a cup of coffee. If I do, I risk being kept up all night and sleeping at dawn which in turn might make me late for my 5 a.m. duty. If I don’t, I could probably fall asleep while writing this piece and my laundry inside the washing machine would whir all night long complaining why it wasn’t manually stopped as it finished its cycle.
Thoughts like these hound my everyday life as I explore the wonders of coffee. Little did I know that our country has been at the forefront of being a coffee-producing nation. Even our neighboring provinces such as Negros Oriental are competing in the national level to be single-origin sources of fancy coffee. The era of third-wave coffee has penetrated into the millennial landscape making it a staple for every 20-year-old something’s day. As for me, I usually start and end my day with coffee – it makes me accomplish a lot of things in a day; especially when 24 hours never seem enough for the many tasks to do.
Young entrepreneurs are making bucks by the hour with the advent of third-wave coffee. Investments have been relegated to opening hole-in-the-wall coffee shops, making sure they are Instagram-worthy to forward the business even more in social media. There is an undying quest to find the best coffee beans in the world. On top of the usual brew, the staple hot drink has evolved to cold ones, blended frappes and even the infamous cold brew.
What makes this black drink so special? It is the fact that workers who toil in the middle of the plantation handpick the best beans for us to get a whole new experience when we reach the bars. These workers are probably underpaid and overworked. They will never get to experience coffee the way we did. The fact of this inequality remains unseen by everybody.
We happily enjoy our own cup, taking photos for our social media followers to see but have we ever thought about how it came to be? Time and time again we continue to be naive to the struggle of the people in the farmlands, not only to those working in a coffee plantation, but to those who are trying to bring food to the city. We chow food down in an instant and throw away what we don’t like anymore. The products of blood and sweat are easily discarded like an unwanted animal.
When will we ever feel the pain of those who worked harder than we did? They are not only heroes of our tables but true warriors of our lands. The Philippines is an agriculture country, when will we ever understand that?
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