My wife and I stayed up to watch part of Independent Lens: Black Gold. I discovered it was the same Black Gold movie I had heard about earlier.
The movie revealed the plight of coffee growers in Ethiopia who don’t even have running water and are forced to sell their beans for a pittance – compared to the rich West (particularly taking a jab at Starbucks) where we treat coffee as a mere commodity. I saw that one of the major problems with coffee today is that we lack education: we don’t know where it comes from, who produces it, how much the farmers and bean pickers earn (yes, they have people who individually sort through beans for next to nothing). We mostly think coffee is coffee. It grows on trees and somehow gets into our cup.
I’ll do a more precise review later, but the movie basically follows Tadesse Meskela, manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union, which represents 74,000 farmers. He travels the world trying to get a better price for their coffee, one that might improve their pitifully low wages.
My heart broke when I saw a group of old worn men, standing around a fire, patiently roasting their own beans on a pan. They cried out to the “God of heaven and earth” to bring them a better price for their coffee. What a horrible reality to think of, that we Christians in the West might be sipping on coffee grown by many tribes who may not even know who their praying to. I don’t know if these poor people know Christ, or have even heard the Gospel. All I know is after watching only half of the film, it was clear that I must do something.
Next cup of coffee you drink, don’t snatch it rudely like something you’re entitled to. Thank the Lord of heaven and earth for it, and for those who produced it: the farmers, the bean sorters, the baggers, the shippers, the buyers, the roasters, the baristas. Pray for good wages for them, especially for the growers, even if it will cost us. And pray for their salvation – that they may know Christ, who took the cup of wrath for us, and has given us instead a cup of blessing.
Perhaps in my next post, I’ll review the movie a bit more, and take a serious look at myself and the coffee I buy, and see what habits I could change.