One morning, my fiancée suggested to me, "why don't you work as a barista, it can do you good." After living in Peru for a couple months I started to gain a craving for locally produced coffee. With its warm and sensual taste bringing out the energetic side of me, I immediately fell head over heels. As I started to think about it more, I felt it would be the wisest thing to do. For most of my experience here, I had been focusing on everything but connecting with the locals. I couldn't hold a conversation, and was unsure if my English was clear enough for the handful people who could understand. After five months of this, I felt it was necessary for me to attack it head on. Without hesitation, I projected that desire and found a generous café called Wake Up Coffee that was willing to exchange training for a reasonable price. The staff welcomed me with open arms and showed me the ropes of how things work behind the counter.
Spending the last two weeks at the coffee shop, I can tell you that there more to it than meets the eye. The skills of a barista consists of multiple parts which include: being a beverage scientist, a language translator, having good team communication and showing a lot of pride with your work of art. I was constantly bamboozled, having all sorts of questions and curiosities. As each day progressed I found new pieces of information trickling in that I may have forgotten from a previous lesson. One thing that I noticed that kept being reinforced was the comfortability of communicating with my mentors whom I had a language barrier with. In someway or another, it was as if we had a personal vocabulary that we both agreed upon to express certain ideas. It didn't matter if we spoke incorrectly. Which is probably why we became really good friends in such a small amount of time.
Overall obtaining a trade that is portable, such as being a barista, can open many doors that you wouldn't have with other careers. With some hands on experience I can now enter a café and be confident in what I am doing for a particular client. I am no master, but I have the knowledge of being able to take my experience and go to all sorts of different places that provide espresso. That is the beauty of portable trades and you are not limited to what you can do. Personally, I wish to program but it doesn't seem time to experience that yet. After completing my training I established more of a home than ever before in Lima. The frustrating part is that in less than five days I am going to be back in the US (if you don't see any new content from me for a little while you will know why). But as Forest Gump says "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." He might be right.
Image from:
https://www.facebook.com/1111WakeUp/