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The Kenco farm is in a glorious location. High in the Honduran highlands, with lakes and forests, it's in a stable agricultural community. Mud-wattle and brick farmhouses line the lanes and it’s refreshing to see young children walking to school in groups along dirt roads, their crisp school uniforms reflecting the morning sun. Cattle laze by the roadside and dogs chase the wheels of our car.
It's a snapshot of how life probably once was all over the country and how far the rest of society has fallen. Honduras was once one of the most important agricultural exporters in Central America we’re told and it remains one of their major industries but, like everything here, it is in crisis. As much a victim of global food prices as its neighbours in the region, it has also suffered as national budgets have been pushed towards solving much bigger problems.
Kenco chose this location carefully. It’s far from urban areas and at an altitude that suits coffee growing. At the main farm building lunch is being prepared and we sit down for the first time with the 19 students on the course. They’re aged from 16 to 23 and look at us with quiet bemusement. We’re not the first journalists they’ve met this year, although they are unaware of how well known the Coffee vs Gangs campaign is in Ireland and the UK.
I want to tell them that I know their faces and their course from our coverage, from cinema ads and billboard posters, but we’ve been warned that it’s better for now that they aren’t aware of how big the campaign is. Even this far from the cities, security is still a major issue and most of their neighbours at home don’t know they are taking part in such a big project.
Possibly to avoid my many “getting-to-know-you” questions, two young women get up and start sharpening their field machetes on a machine. Sparks fly and the quiet is broken and conversation flows again. Like teenagers and young adults everywhere they’re a smiling, relaxed, dapper lot who enjoy having their photograph taken. It’s hard to imagine that any of them could get wrapped up in gangs or criminality, but the communities they are from are considered to be places of high risk and low opportunity and suggest the awful truth of the insecurity here – anyone can get engulfed in violence.
Over the past eight months they have undertaken training in all aspects of coffee farm production. They’ve studied business and management, finance and English, modern agricultural practices and crop cultivation. They seem a coherent group that works well together and over the three days we spend with them it’s hard to see anyone being left out. We’re excited to interview them and know they have great stories to tell. We’ve an education ahead.
Next week:
A female student on why women need to reclaim their place on the land