Extravagance
I was in one of the villages near our medical base and was served some coffee. It was one of the best cups of coffee I have ever had. I asked where did they get this coffee–an old woman smiled and told us it was from her tree. She told us that all of the fruit tree and coffee trees had been destroyed in the crisis. She got this twinkle in her eye and said, ” My coffee is from a few branches that survived.” I asked her if she had more and she raised her eyebrows. This is the same as nodding affirmatively for us. I wanted to buy some of her coffee to take home with me. She agreed to sell me some of her coffee.
We walked down the road to her home. The front of her home was just a huge hole where bombs had found their target. She walked in and went thru another door. A few minuted later she comes with about five ounces of coffee. She told me it was all she had left. It was a small amount but it was also an opportunity to bless this old woman. I looked into my wallet and I had a 5,000 Rupiah (55 cents) and 100,000 Rupiah ($ 11 USD.) and I had a choice to make. She offered to just give me the coffee. There was no way I was going to miss the chance to shock her with a big gift. I rolled up the 100,000 bill and put it into her hand. I took my coffee beans and started to walk down the road.
I felt great knowing she was getting more than she expected. She was a surviver who had excaped with her life from the years of the conflict. She and her coffee had that in common. As I walked down the road I heard her excited shouts to the woman across the road. She was saying, “You cannot believe what that crazy white man gave me for my coffee.” She got more for this small amount of coffee than most workers get in a week of hard work. She had reason to shout. This was a day when extravagance came to her door.
The coffee was wonderful. I had it roasted and enjoyed every sip. It was also especially nice knowing a small amount of the bitterness of life had been removed from this old woman’s life.
We are now growing 200 coffee trees on our base. These trees were started from seeds from this village. These beans came from the branches that survived the conflict. The trees are now 10-12 feet tall and are just full of coffee beans–our hope is to market the coffee in the future.