It’s incredibly hard to know my time here in Colombia has come to a close. Walking around the neighborhood of my first Airbnb flat once more yesterday, I recall the culture shock of the first week; it’s difficult to think that I’ve done anything but grown from four months of new experiences– from the mundaneness of trying to figure out a safe place to order a familiar dinner (and then ordering from Rappi) to the complexity of collecting data to explain why the coffee value system is inequitable. You don’t think you get to grow this much as this in your 40s, not the least in a lengthy time as short as four months… but alas, I hope I did.
I owe so much of this experience to Judi, Lucy, and Maxwell for sacrificing four months of my presence at home to let me deeply pursue the coffee passion I’ve had for more than 20 years, so I can also start folding it into the next stage of my academic career. It wasn’t practical for them to join my entire time here (this time?), yet it also wouldn’t have been practical for me to conduct some Zooms from the US and think I could understand this side of the industry. Aside from visits to farms, even wandering all over Bogotá (and I’ve walked much of this city, from Calle 11 to 120) helped embed me in the research context to better understand the work. People can joke about me getting to be away from our family daily grind for four months to drink coffee, but I could never be able to express to my family how much gratitude I have for them letting me take the opportunity to do this (and I will say, missing our daily grind was not necessarily emotionally easy on my end either). I hope they (especially Lucy and Maxwell) recognize that it was not a “vacation” from them, but instead, the genuine start of me getting to do tikkun olam— to “repair the world”– in the way I’ve always wanted. And I hope as the kids get older, they both are inspired by me (and by Judi in her career) to find ways and take opportunities to repair the world in their own ways.
To that end, I thank my parents for opportunities to travel as a child and to live in Montreal for four years. Living here– not just visiting– on my own, in another country, with socioeconomic disparity, in a third language with nearly no spoken English, requires an adaptable skillset that challenges a neurodivergent need for routine and familiarity. It was fine that vacations weren’t luxury; my parents tried to expose my sister and me to understanding the wider world and then added to my family’s exposure by bringing them here to visit (and also my in-laws, who have done the same elsewhere). Those privileged trips have helped me become, as my Fulbright colleague from UC Colorado Springs said, “a person in the world.”
Over four months, I got to know this city better, I got to know various parts of this country better, and I got to enrich my understanding of the coffee industry to the point where I think I can call myself a “coffee scholar(?)”. To that end, I’ve made a good friend in my colleague Andrés Barrios. Given the data we’ve produced, we have a lot of productivity to materialize ahead of us. But almost none of the data would’ve been, if not for Andrés leveraging connections around the country, for his patience with my lack of Spanish skills, and for his willingness to take on a whole new area of inquiry by working with me (and this is before we even start analyzing the qualitative data, which is not something I’ve really done before). Coming from similar Transformative Consumer Research mindsets (yet not crossing paths), I cannot see how my Fulbright experience would’ve necessarily been as productive as I feel it was, if not for him. I believe it will help contribute to both academic and industry conversations, and also validate the sacrifices made by my family to be here.
There are others to thank: Those who helped Judi filling in with carpooling or watching the kids or having them all over for dinner so she could take a night off from cooking. Those whose connecting with me by text, Whatsapp, etc, was a salve for day-to-day aloneness. Jhon and Jorge, the doormen at my second Airbnb flat, who indulged my sputtering Spanish to give me more practice.
Of course, I thank Fulbright Colombia for awarding me the U.S. Scholar grant, Universidad de los Andes for sponsoring the grant and the Marketing area in their business school for being so welcoming and gracious to me as a colleague, and my department/Manning School/UMass Lowell for granting me sabbatical leave.
We’ve only just collected some (a lot) of the data. There’s more analysis, more writing, more data collection, more conferences, more good coffee ahead. This coffee scholarship journey is only just beginning; given the nature of the research, I feel like it won’t be the last time I’m in Colombia (or at origin).
Muchisimas gracias, Colombia. Hasta la próxima. :’-)
Leave a Reply