Week 6: COFFEE!

I was excited to talk about coffee with my family this week.  We have heard so much about how important coffee is to the Costa Rican culture.  While I am not a coffee drinker I do appreciate the importance that it holds in most peoples lives, and was excited to see the importance that it held for my family.  With my initial question my Tica mom informed me that coffee is drunk all throughout the day by all kinds of people.  She explained that almost everyone has coffee at least with his or her breakfast.  From my conversation with my mom I also learned just how important coffee is to the Costa Rican culture.  She told me that many times when you drink coffee it is not actually about the coffee, it is about the people you drink coffee with.  Here in Costa Rica, coffee is completely a cultural and social thing.  You drink coffee when catching up with friends, spending time with family, or even just drinking it alone to relax and savor the moment.  While my family uses a typical modern coffee pot, my mom explained to be the traditional way that coffee is made here in Costa Rica (the wooden contraption with the white sack).  She told me that it has been a tradition in Costa Rica for a long time and that many people enjoy it because it produces such pure coffee.  She also explained that everyone had coffee cups, and that coffee should always be drunk in those mugs, because it would just be “raro” or weird to drink it in a normal cup.  I learned that while coffee is often drunk with something to eat, it is often drunk alone so that they can savor the sole flavor of the coffee.

            I have two Tica sisters, one 14 and one 18, and they both drink coffee on occasion.  The older one has it more often than the younger one, but they will both drink it with breakfast or in social settings.  I think it is interesting to look at the differences between generations when it comes to coffee.  While the girls do drink it, they do not drink it as often as their parents.  It is not uncommon that I come home to find my Tica mom and her friends sitting around the dinner table drinking coffee.  However, when my youngest sister, Dani, has friends over they opt to huddle around the computer instead of coffee.  I have also had conversations with my students at Tacho about coffee.  While some of them thoroughly enjoy it, I have talked to many people who do not like it but are proud of it because it is just an important part of their culture. The young people I have talked to say that coffee has been available to them for a large portion of their lives.  While it would not have been acceptable for them to be hopped up on coffee all the time as little children, many of them say they remember trying coffee for the first time when they were really young.  The students and my mom helped me to understand that there is not really a set age to begin drinking coffee, but it is usually when the kids are getting older rather than when they are really young.

            I think that it is so cool that coffee holds so much meaning in Costa Rica.  It is just one more thing to add to the long list that makes Costa Rica such a cultural country.  It is so neat to see the pride that they have in their coffee, and again how they savor the freshness of it.  The theme of fresh food that is so prevalent in Costa Rica most certainly applies to coffee as well.  When my family drinks coffee they drink it black.  When I think back to the coffee plantation I do not recall many available additives for us to put in our coffee.  I think that shows how much Costa Ricans treasure the pureness of their food.  They love the raw and natural products and know how to enjoy and appreciate food and drink for what it is without having to add multiple ingredients to it.  They enjoy best in its most natural form, which is refreshing in itself.

As for my photos this week I have included a picture of coffee at a local café named Kaldi, which we recently learned means hot!  Kaldi is only one of the thousands of places where coffee is sold in Costa Rica.  Actually you can go most anywhere here and get a fresh cup of coffee.  It is literally sold everywhere! It is in most any restaurant and can be found at every supermarket and food store.  There are multiple options for coffee, but they are specifically Costa Rican coffee.  I have also noticed that coffee is advertised many places.  When it is advertised I have seen it as a very warm and inviting advertisement that call upon you to indulge yourself in it.

I think that it is very interesting to look at the differences between coffee cultures here and coffee cultures in the U.S.  Here they savor it in many ways.  They drink it as pure as possible, take their time with it, and use it as a vehicle for socializing.  However, in the us we drown coffee with additives, guzzle it down on the way to work, and use it almost solely as a means of energy. We rarely ever use it as a socializing time.  Many times people even go to coffee shops alone.  It is not uncommon that a person from the U.S.  will escape other people and stresses to go sit at a coffee shop alone to get things accomplished.  I know that it happens all the time with college students.  They might spend a late night in the local coffee shop and then grab one to go and sprint to class the next morning.  We don’t savor the flavor; we thrive on the caffeine boost we receive from coffee.  I think that maybe a big role in this huge difference is that in Costa Rica they produce their coffee and they are proud of it.  They are attached to it and respect it enough to value it.  However, we have no personal attachment and just need it to get us through the day.  It holds no personal meaning for us, so we just use it when necessary.