Episode 3: Meeting Diego Chavarria
I heard about Diego Chavarria long before I met him. He and his four brothers were part of a large family that befriended some American college-aged youths in the 70’s and 80’s. They were sent to Nicaragua to assist rural communities get fresh water, teach literacy classes, and open several medical clinics.
Diego’s mother opened her home to these Americans, saying that if her boys were in America, she would want someone to do the same. She fed them, did their laundry, and helped them adjust to life in the campo - the mountainous countryside three hours out of Managua.
Andrew was one of these Americans. I knew Andrew from my childhood days in Hartville, Ohio. As a teenager, I remember hearing that he went to Nicaragua. Now, both of us were over 55 years old, and he kept telling me about Diego. “You need to meet him. He grows great coffee and yet, life is hard. Their family is barely making it month to month.”
I was a coffee buyer but had not yet been to Nicaragua. As one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, I knew it would be a challenge to logistically get coffee out of that country. There are over 100 steps that a farmer does that will directly impact the quality of the coffee. When prices are cheap and inputs (like fertilizer) expensive, most rural areas let the coffee grow wild or just do what they need to do to get a harvest. Labor is the costliest part of the harvest, so this is minimized by stripping all the coffee cherries in one pass through the plantation—whether it’s green, ripe, or rotten. This makes horrible-tasting coffee.
In early April one year, I called Diego and said I wanted to come visit him. He said, “Are you sure? We are in Quapotol, no one comes here.” I said, “I’m coming next week.”
Diego picked me up at the Managua airport. We drove the three-hour drive to Matagalpa. We fueled up and headed out on a road that, at times, was so bad we crept through the potholes and craters. After another three hours, we were in El Tuma. There, we turned off the main road onto a two-track mud road for another 19 kilometers.
As we navigated the mud road, crawling in 4-wheel drive, I asked Diego what his coffee tasted like. He said he did not know; he never drank it. “Never drank it!” I exclaimed. “How can you have 600 acres of coffee plantation and never drink your own coffee?”
“Well, my dad taught me to sell everything we produce. What is left over is so bad we can’t stand to drink it. We drink Nescafe Crystals.” I was shocked.
As our Jeep turned into the farm gate of Diego’s farm, there were several other trucks there. All his brothers had come to meet this American coffee guy that made it all the way out to Quapotol. And I was glad—glad to be in Quapotol and glad to be out of that Jeep! Soon we would taste some coffee.