OFELIA COLORADO

My name is Ofelia Colorado Álvarez, I am 75 years old and I live with my son Raymundo, the others are already apart. I like to work in many things; I like to make mole, make tortillas or go to the farm to plant black beans, I like to make tamales, but I don’t like to sell them, I like to distribute them to my family, I do sell the mole paste that I make. I have been planting coffee for more or less 35 years, before; we used to grow coffee with a smaller plant and at that time coffee had a good price. We had nothing and my children were just growing up, so my husband once said to me: “What are we going to do now? I want to plant coffee and I want to work it, but how would I do it, if I have to earn something now to support the family” So we organized ourselves; at harvest time I would go with my older children to work and cut coffee from others farms, while he stayed to work, make the holes and make his seedlings, because at that time we did not buy the plant, he made the seedlings and planted, and that is how we were able to do it, we all worked together and helped each other. That is our livelihood, I thank God for the fruit that he gives us, there has not been a year without coffee, there is always coffee. I have 3 rules of wisdom that I read in a story and they have been very useful to me: The first one is “do not believe everything they tell you”, the second one is “do not cry for lost things” and the third one is “what was yours, always keep it”. The story was about a farmer who wanted to catch a nightingale for his courage, but when he let it free he lamented, soon after the nightingale gave him these three lessons.