>Coffeeland Honduras still in need of $7000 before Christmas Eve

December 22, 2010 by Leave a Comment

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Coffeeland Honduras
 a documentary.
by Jacob Orr and Hunt Slade
The size of my world is relative to my ability to put it into perspective. To an ant, a tennis ball is the Empire State Building. To a frog, an alligator is a dragon, and to me, Honduras is a lifetime away. That is about to change in a big way.

What will be a pretty normal Saturday morning for my friends and family will be something quite historic for me. In February, 2011, I will get on a plane, as I have done many times before, but instead of an old rotten suitcase full of skinny jeans and button ups, I will be toting a backpack full of waterproof boots, fire making essentials and water purification pills.

The plane will seem normal and very American – comfortable seats and pleasant flight attendants offering snacks and pillows. When it lands it will feel the same… Then my feet will hit the ground of a place I have only seen in pictures. My breath won’t be visible, as it was outside of Hartsfield when the plane left Atlanta on this future cold February morning.
I will be standing in Olancho, Honduras. The rights I have as an American will be distant. The safety I have as a citizen of the U.S. will become a target on my back and I will be led to a caravan of jeeps that will, over the better part of the day, carry me to a small, forgotten village named Linares. I will see the ruins of what used to be a thriving coffee farm and subsistence farmers who used to tend these plots, and I will finally gain what I want most from this trip: perspective.

I will see firsthand what Hurricane Mitch did to the 22 families that make up Linares. I will see their smiles. I will eat the food they prepare for me and I will hear their stories. I will know their grief as they tell about what used to be, and I will hear them laugh as they retell stories of the good old days. With their words I will know their story, and with that I can gain a glimpse of another world that few get to see.

For the past year, Safehouse Coffee and Tea has been working with Love For Honduras to assess whether these farms can once again sustain themselves with coffee. Our research has returned a very positive prognosis, and we will begin our work there on the February Saturday morning.

Our first order of business will be to confirm all the data that we have received remotely over the past months through IHCAFE, the Honduran Institute of Coffee. Provided that even 75 percent of our findings hold true, we will begin to help these people turn their land around and begin to produce a crop that their children will tend and pass down to following generations. The great success there will be a resounding cry of hope that will echo off the borders of Honduras and, hopefully, inspire other villages to do the same. The scope of this project spans a decade, but all great works begin with a single action.

What the Safehouse team has proposed is to make a series of documentaries about this land and the families there so that we can share our insight and perspectives with the world. Why a documentary? Great needs can only be met if those needs are clearly identified and communicated. Only then can comprehensive and collaborative plans be made to address the needs.

The medium of film and specifically, documentaries have proven a reliable resource to communicate these kinds of issues. We will be working side by side with the families of Linares for the next ten years and there is much to be learned about the real difficulties and triumphs in the 70+ coffee-growing countries of the world – we will start with one and we hope that you would partner with us to make a difference.
 Kickstarter.com is a website that helps fundraise for creative endeavors; in this case, our documentaries. Please visit Kickstarter.com and search for “Coffeeland Honduras.” We have to raise $10,000 by Christmas Eve to make this documentary a reality and we are currently at 30 percent of that goal. Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing fund raiser, meaning we have to raise the entire amount by the deadline or we get none of it at all. We hope that you would consider giving just a piece of your Christmas to this project and be a part of a permanent change for an entire village.
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