“Greg”: a Haitian Coffee Filter
No fancy french press is needed when I am around. I am easy to pack. You can take me along for the journey to any remote locale. I can be folded & packed away into the smallest of spaces. When in use, I expand into a cone shape that dangles below a wire frame. I am a cloth coffee filter. Most neighborhoods in Haitian towns have a coffee woman who filters out the piping hot coffee & fills cups, urns, or any other vessel with the rich black goodness. These coffee women rise before dawn to stoke the charcoal or wood fire that will be used to heat the water. I am their tool. Once it is piping hot, the water is poured over grounds placed in me to create the coffee that will jumpstart the day for healthcare professionals, educators, laborers & students.
There is an art to pouring the boiling water through me without getting burned by water splashing back out the top. A slow controlled pour is best. Coffee beans roasted with cinnamon or sugar add flavor to this brew. Since the beans are usually ground by hand using a pestle, the grounds are coarse enough to be caught by my weave. I take on the flavor of the different varieties of coffee grounds that are placed in me, and I create the wafting aromas that entice passers-by to stop for a quick cup. The coffee women and I are well aware of the comings and goings in the neighborhood. We plan our days around the goal of offering a service to our neighbors.
Around midday there will be a second round of coffee to be filtered by me. Farmers taking a break from the fields will enjoy a midmorning snack of bread & coffee to sustain them in their work. People in the workplace may also return for another helping of caffeine offered by my steaming black filtered goodness. Since I require no electricity, I am found in remote mountain villages as well as major cities, where electric power is irregular at best but more often non-existent. I provide access to a creature comfort enjoyed by the masses.
When the sun is high in the sky, it is simple enough to rinse me out and leave me to dry. The coffee grounds will be tossed out or used as garden compost. But I will be carefully washed & dried. I am never cast aside. I will be packed away, ready for duty again tomorrow morning.
Coffee is grown in the mountains of Haiti, & is even exported to places like the United States. Growers’ cooperatives connect local farmers to national & international markets. But for coffee to be enjoyed at home, in the mountains & plains of the island where it is grown, I— the humble cloth coffee filter— am essential.
