Repent and Expatriate

What is the new American Dream? I think I've found it.

The white house and picket fence of old-- idyll, but too idle for today's generation-- has been replaced with something more active, though just as quaint and innocent: the coffee shop. Not Starbucks, but something at once new and nostalgic; the homey, earth friendly, indigenous art on the walls kind of place, where people gather in the dim natural light and listen to sounds of the rainforest (or use the free wi/fi-- whatever).

Here at the coffee shop in Nicaragua where I'm writing this, the owner roasts his organic homegrown beans daily. He talks about the ecological consequences of Nicaragua's proposed canal, and the socioethical consequences of gringos taking over political control of a tropical paradise such as this. It's as wholesome as whole wheat bread; but before all this the owner was an oil company executive. It makes me think of Global Village back in Raleigh, with its organic shadegrown yada yada; the owner there was a marketing exec for Slim Jim before being reborn into environmentalist coffee. (I generally wouldn't compare Slim Jim to Shell Oil, but the factory that exploded several weeks ago and left a toxic cloud over North Carolina makes me wonder).

Neither shops fills a real need-- Hillsborough Street averages about one coffee shop per block, and here in Nicaragua the appeal is more about being around other gringos and escaping the need to speak spanish than anything else. So why coffee? I think it represents some kind of repenting. How could the warm, smiling face serving up delicious iced mochas from fair trade coffee possibly be associated with assassinations in Nigeria (Shell finally settled last month for $15 million) or stolen indigenous lands in Ecuador (the Cofan are still fighting this, both in court and in the rainforest)?

Or maybe, cynically, it's just the pursuit of profit in our new "green" economy.