More from the Vanilla Queen: Patricia Rain Tells Her Story

After the post Patricia wrote for me last week, I e-mailed and asked where she had visited the vanilla farmers. She generously answered:

I first visited Papantla, Veracruz Mexico in 1992, again in 1994 and then nearly yearly until 2002. I haven't been back since though I miss my crazy Mexican family terribly. I'm going again in February. This is where I did a lot of my research on the early history of vanilla as well as the contemporary face of vanilla in Mexico.

The first visit was after taking the bus from Puebla where I had spoken at the University of Mexico at a conference celebrating the 500 years since the encounter of old and new world food traditions. There were many famous food anthropologists, historians (Michael and & Sophie Coe -- The True Story of Chocolate), economists, sociologists, etc...and me.

At the conference I assumed someone would know who to meet and where to go in Papantla, the center of the vanilla industry in Mexico, but no one knew anyone, which was why I was there representing vanilla. I was really nervous about getting on the bus and heading into the tropics alone, but there was a certain exhilaration about it as well. I was 49 years old and 1-1/2 years out of a ten-year relationship/marriage that had been very challenging, so it was like reinventing myself.

When I got to the bus station I decided to look for the most intelligent person going to the Coast and to ask him/her for information. I found a black man who was wearing a tweed jacket and looked bright. There are a lot of black people on the Veracruz Coast. Some are descendents of slaves who had been shipwrecked or escaped or who emigrated south from the states when they were freed, and some are Cubans or from Caribbean Islands who had come to Mexico, so I assumed he was a local. We ended up standing next to each other and I noticed he had a bag next to him that said, "Property of the US Military."

I turned to him and asked if he was an American and he said yes. I then asked if he knew the region well, and he said yes. I said, "I'm an American anthropologist and I'm going to study the vanilla growers of Mexico and I know no one in the area." He said, "I'm an anthropologist too, studying the folk music of the Coast and I have been living with a family in Tuxpan."

It turns out that the bag wasn't his but it acted as a catalyst for a four-day trip with Raymond, who acted as guide and co-explorer of the region. His work was actually along the Coast in the bars, collecting Huaxtecan music, whereas mine was closer to the ruins of El Tajin and with the Totonacs and Mestizos. It was a fascinating four days with a funny, wild guy with a big past who had turned his life around, and we met the town gangsters quite by accident, as well as many locals. But all of that isn't part of this story.

On that trip I was only in Papantla two days. But in 1994 I went for 18 days and that's when I began to meet the growers and to start working with them. I discovered that the book I had written on vanilla in 1986 had preceded me and that I was a town celebrity. The growers asked me to help them to rescue the Mexican industry. I have some deep bonds with the community there. I have spent a lot of time there since 1994.

We are still waiting for our ambulance for Papantla, which has been pushed back indefinitely due to the hurricanes in the Gulf. The ambulance company director has been head of operations for months now and hasn't been here to get the ambulance. However, we have 50,000 children's vitamins, medical supplies, and 300 books to send down with the ambulance to keep it running (books will be used to sell to the tourist market). I will be going down in February with or without the ambulance to teach a workshop on how to market vanilla and value-added products to the Mexican tourism industry.

In 1998 I went with some Frenchmen, one of whom was born in Sumatra, who had started a vanilla business in Indonesia, and were going to Bali and Lombok to get the annual organic certification of the vanilla. It was a fascinating trip. My best moment was at a Balinese collective in Western Lombok where many Balinese were relocated after Mt. Agung exploded in 1964, ruining the farm land of thousands of Balinese. The certifier was there so the men were going from grower to grower, counting the vines and inspecting them. I stayed with a translator and locals. As a way to open the conversation, I told the people about the Mexican legends of chocolate and vanilla, as these people are Balinese Hindus, an interesting branch of Hinduism initially brought by the Indians in around 800 (or earlier) and changed over the years to be specific to Indonesia. I knew that the culture was based around myths and legends and this might be a good ice breaker.

The people listened with great interest. Then they asked, "What do these Totonac people look like?" I told them they looked a lot like them, that they were fine boned, very attractive people, not very tall and very industrious. They said, "Are they brown like us?" I said that they were and then I told them some of the ways that vanilla was traditionally grown by the Totonacs.

There was a long pause after I finished, and then someone said, "Well, here we don't give up sex when we plant the vanilla but...." There was a long series of conversations on growing and planting vanilla in Indonesia, the rituals, the celebrations and much more. Then I was taken into the family homes and showed how they make a blend of coffee beans, cacao beans and vanilla to flavor their drinks. I later was privileged to attend a few of the many rituals that occur throughout the year in Bali. However, sitting in the forest on the hill talking with the locals, I remember thinking that it doesn't get much better than this.

When I was in Indonesia, I made a video of how to cure and dry vanilla in the tradition that was started in Reunion at the end of the 19th century. My video has been watched by Indonesians, Mexicans, and Ugandans as I've passed it around to farmers to teach them new techniques for curing and drying vanilla.

In 2001 I went to Tahiti for three weeks and traveled from island to island, staying in pensions and interviewing people about vanilla growing in Tahiti. It was a very different environment, but again, people wanted to share their stories and were very open and interested. Here, however, they didn't care what the other people looked like; they wanted to know what the soil was like. As a result, I now carry photos of people, soil, compost, tutor trees, and other rather mundane details that are of interest to farmers.

When I began writing the history book in 2003, people in Papua New Guinea, Tonga, India and African countries shared their stories with me, not only about growing vanilla but also about their traditional cultures and how they've changed. People who have lived either in a traditional culture or in small town culture don't want to lose their history, and they're very open about sharing fascinating glimpses into their lives -- traditional and contemporary.

Finally, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003, I sent an e-mail to lots and lots of people around the world who have become online friends. I knew I wouldn't be able to write to them as frequently as I would have liked and wanted to let them know what was up. The outpouring of love, prayers, advice and even tonics and treatments flooded in. People who had very little materially were filled with concern and love and they gave it in abundance.

This is why I am so committed to the International Tropical Farmers' Network, a nascent group of farmers worldwide who speak English and represent anywhere from a few to thousands of other farmers. This is a project-in-progress that I began in June. By empowering tropical growers with information, resources and hopefully, at some point, a foundation with funding for educational projects, they will be able to change the way that vanilla and other tropical commodities have been traded and controlled for hundreds of years.

In addition to the Network we are setting up projects in Mexico and Uganda for women to market and promote vanilla in their countries as well as creating vanilla ornament making collectives to sell Fair Trade in the US. We're hoping to establish programs also in Tahiti and Indonesia and maybe someday in Madagascar. Madagascar is by far the most difficult to reach the locals as they are often poorly educated, speak only Malagasy, have no electricity, and live hours back into the bush with "non-roads." Whereas young people in many countries know basic English and have access to the Internet at cafes, in Madagascar, all of this is unknown to the growers. They don't even know how vanilla is used.

See also the Vanilla.com's "Meet the Growers" section.

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Thank you, Patricia!

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: "You know the great irony is that people think you have to have money to enjoy fine food, which is a shame." —Ted Allen

Thanks for visiting.