Concerns about Coffee

In a new series of articles in Politiken, Kristian Ditlev Jensen performs the act of Apprentice for a Day "in a number of colourful branches of trade", as the sidebar puts it. He has tried his luck as a cook (covered on Jan. 7), as a garbage collector (Jan. 14) and then in today's article which takes place in Nicaragua: as a coffee picker. (The concept does have an air of odd jobs performed during sabbatical years about it). In the coming weeks he'll be a halal butcher and an advertising agent too, and readers are encouraged to suggest other jobs for him to explore.

If I were to characterise Ditlev Jensen's approach in today's article (I haven't seen the first two) I'd call it exactly that: explorative. The reporter has been wondering what it's like to work as a coffee picker and goes on to try it out. "He wants to be treated like any other coffee picker. Don't show him special consideration or do anything out of the ordinary", says the representative for the coffee cooperative when she drops the reporter off at the edge of the rain forest in the mountains and leaves him to the care of Pedro, his new boss-for-a-day.

The reporter is an inexperienced, unskilled worker who does however have the talent to describe his experience in vivid detail: The wooden shacks in the forest, the meals of red beans and rice, cow's cheese and tortillas, heavily sugared cups of coffee, the rough wooden furniture and green plastic chairs. A yellow rain coat on a peg. And then, of course, the work: the dirt, the cob webs, the wind, the coffee berries, beans in baskets and sore fingers.

His approach is explorative, I said - but still it stays descriptive. Ditlev Jensen never seems to form an opinion about his material or decide on an angle on his story. The article has a subject and is quite informative, but it doesn't have a thesis since Ditlev Jensen makes no claims about his subject.

No guidance is provided concerning (his or our) view on the scenario which may seem justified in so far as the text is simply written as a diary/notebook and structured chronologically: "8.05 - half a basket later", "9.07 - automatically", "10.04 - straw hat", an so forth. What is more, the text is published in the life style section of the paper and is not supposed to be argumentative or to qualify as news worthy. Still it seems to me that there is a misunderstanding at play concerning the classical reporter's principle of showing and not telling. I do appreciate to have the scenario described to me, to have specific details brought forth that makes me able to draw conclusions on my own. But I like the reporter - especially a first hand witness and participant observer who includes his "I" in his story - to give the reader a sense of direction and of focus in the show: Why is this detail significant? You picked it out to be included in the presentation - and what are you trying to say? What is it all adding up to?

The only sense of conclusion and evaluation of the experience (except for Pedro's final estimate of Ditlev Jensen's efficiency as a worker as being way below average) is added as a note at the end and is concerned with what turns out to be the excuisite quality of coffee from Pedro's particular piece of land. Ditlev Jensen reports that in cooperation with a Danish coffee importer he will do his best to buy Pedro some more land in order to finally, perhaps, make this fine coffee available to Danish consumers. This, however, is presented as more of an accidental twist to the story.

Kristian Ditlev Jensen manages to communicate a general sense of empathy with the workers and a genuine interest in their "colourful trade" by stepping into their shoes and making careful notes for his readers in the process. But as the reader's guide in the scenario, he comes across as being at once passionate and vague; a rhetorical agent without an agenda.