The Pedagogy of Mud: Turning a Coffee Byproduct into a School Building and Remaking a Community

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments Vol 13, No.1 (Spring 2003) ISSN 1546-2250 The Pedagogy of Mud: Turning a Coffee Byproduct into a School Building and Remaking a Community 1 Darcy Varney University of Colorado Citation: Varney, Darcy. “The Pedagogy of Mud: Turning a Coffee Byproduct into a School Building and Remaking a Community.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring 2003. Retrieved [date] from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye. Keywords: school design; community participation; children’s participation; rural poverty Ten years ago, getting to the mountain hamlet of Palzoquitiqupan in Veracruz, Mexico, was tough, even by four-wheel drive. Businessman Bill Fishbein remembers the “impossible road” leading up to the tiny village where families eked out a living growing and harvesting coffee beans in a dying market. “I’ve rarely seen a community so poor,” says Fishbein, who had traveled to Palzoquitiqupan as a representative of Coffee Kids, the nonprofit organization he founded to improve the quality of life for children and families in coffee-growing communities around the world. Oversupply had forced coffee prices to an all-time low, and workers could barely survive on the pennies they made from each pound of beans. Children lived in dirt-floored shacks without running water, electricity or latrines. Disease was rampant. When he returned to the village this past February, Fishbein scaled the newly cleared mountain road with ease and found the place transformed. The coffee market has not improved, but the economy of the village has grown, thanks to the support of Coffee Kids and the creativity and ingenuity of the residents themselves. Mothers have begun growing nutritious mushrooms to feed their families and have started a mushroom-cultivation business to generate income. Village families have planted vegetable gardens. And, while a good number of the children still go without shoes, many now have clean composting toilets at home and a plan for the future. It all began with the construction of a school building made of coffee hulls. 374 Coffee Kids staff works with the residents of coffee-growing communities to help them take stock of their assets and develop projects to benefit their communities. In Palzoquitiqupan, Fishbein met with families and learned that their first goal was to build a school on land left vacant by the demise of a coffee farm. They had already found a teacher, but the children had nowhere to meet. The families had priced building materials and knew that they needed $2,200 to build two elementary schools, one in their village and one in a neighboring hamlet. Fishbein thought the amount a pittance, not enough for two new buildings. But the residents had a plan. On their own, a group of women in the village had figured out how to turn an abundant local waste product into a valuable building material: pergaminoadobe. Inside each ripe coffee “cherry” is a pair of green beans that turn a rich chestnut brown during the roasting process. Each raw bean is surrounded by a natural parchment, an aril orpergamino, which is discarded as the beans are processed. The enterprising women had noticed piles of pergamino at the local coffee processing plant and negotiated a deal with its owner to turn the byproduct into adobe bricks. He agreed, and the women began their work. Village residents needed money for the rest of the school building supplies: windows, doors, light fixtures. Fishbein recruited his coffee-business supporters to donate the cash, and the village rallied to build its new school. Teenagers participated in the construction with gusto as their younger siblings offered moral support. The result was a beautiful structure that soon became the center of village life. Now, children attend the school in official uniforms and delight in their activities. The school also functions as a community center, as older youth and their relatives meet there to develop new ideas and work on the mushroom-cultivation project. Coffee Kids supports alternative income projects to help families survive the instability of the volatile coffee market throughout Mexico and Central America. Women’s savings programs have spawned new community-based businesses: beauty parlors, pigfattening enterprises, midwifery services, and other small 375 enterprises have supplanted coffee as the main...