Black Gold: Fair Trade Coffee

After not blogging in a while, several things are happening this week that are making me want to write more. The first has to do with coffee. Last night Eileen and I watched the movie Black Gold with our friends Ben and Megan. It's a very well done documentary regarding fair-trade coffee and it gives faces and names to the farmers who produce the commodity which we so mindlessly consume billions of cups of every day. Perhaps the most moving scene in the film for me was seeing the Ethiopian farmers who produce the coffee we drink praying to God that they would be paid a fair wage for their work. To find out more, or learn how to get a copy of the movie, click the link above.

While I have known about fairly traded coffee and other products for a while, I have to confess that I am by no means consistent in buying them. I always buy fairly traded coffee to drink at home in the mornings - that I have done for a while. But when my middle-of-the-day caffeine craving hits, I find myself buying whatever I can get from whatever coffee shop happens to be most convenient. The most common of these places is the seminary's cafeteria, where the coffee doesn't even taste good!

So, I repent. Starting today I will no longer buy coffee at the seminary's cafeteria or at places which I know do not pay fair prices for their coffee beans. At some point I hope to talk to Mike, the chef at our cafeteria to find out if it's possible to get fair-trade coffee at the seminary - perhaps Pura Vida, or some other company which sees fair-trade as a Christian vocation. In the mean time, though, I'm cut off. Hello caffeine headaches.