Coffee and Sugar

Coffee and sugar are two commodities grown in El Salvador although probably more coffee than sugar. I don't know very much about that as we were a missionary family and never involved in the farming issues, unlike the coffee barons, possibly the Hills family who apparently also moonlighted as the sellers of paint. Anyway, obviously sugar is grown right here in hot and humid Central Florida so sugar is a domestic internal issue although also imported whereas coffee is probably not much grown in the United States and mostly all imported for our consumption from all over the Third World where salaries of those poor pickers of coffee beans are so low that you would freak out if you knew but they are used to living like that so what are we supposed to say about that? It is not like we have the power to make those decisions anyway. If the people want to stock their shelves with coffee, then they will continue to fund living expenses of thousands of dirt poor people. But if one prefers to drink soda then also one is funding the living expenses of thousands of dirt poor people who harvest the sugar cane or else the sugar beets here in the U.S. or perhaps in the Caribbean or Russia. Yes, I suppose that it was sort of weird for me to be living in a country where coffee is the main crop for both export and internal consumption, a place where coffee is drunk for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and all of the time, and yet myself not really like coffee very much and preferring rather to drink soda or whatever else is available but not for reasons of boycotting or having any awareness of the coffee barons. I just don't like the taste of it very much. It's a personal thing. We always drank iced tea at our house with our dinner. I don't really care that this perhaps bugs the coffee people. It's a personal kind of thing, my decision not to drink coffee. I am not saying that the People of the Republic are wrong to drink coffee if they so choose but there is no law in this regard, only some persnickety people who are actually trying to make a stupid point about other beverages that I also choose not to drink. So fine, be that way. However, I think that these people should remember that I am not a mere cup of coffee nor am I a spoonful of sugar. I am a human being just like everybody else who is appalled at your draconianly stupid tactics.