Rachel Rose and her coffee-making guest Alex Musalem found New Zealand and Mexico had issues in common.
WOULD Alejandro (Alex) Lopez Musalem be the first person to arrive at Whanganui airport from the Gulf of Mexico?
It took four flights and more hours than I care to calculate, but this special visitor arrived in Whanganui beaming last week.
From time to time, my partner and I host "wwoofers" - volunteers on a work exchange scheme - and this is how Alex found us. Our usual volunteers are young Europeans or Americans, travelling the world and exploring different ways of life.
It was clear from Alex's first email that his was not an ordinary request. He's a consultant in regenerative agriculture, experienced in community development and has a masters degree in tropical agro-forestry.
He wrote: "Now I live off the grid, on a hectare of land in the cloud forest where my family and I grow coffee, veggies, fruit trees and keep chickens. I studied tropical agro-forestry in Costa Rica, and worked in the UK for a while."
Alex has just left and I'm still digesting all the conversations and learning that happened during his brief stay.
He was a delightful visitor, interesting and interested. Humble, too - it took days to come out that he is a colleague, student and friend with some of the luminaries of the permaculture and social justice movements.
I was keen to share with Alex some of the notable initiatives happening in our district, and our first stop was Mark Christensen's research gardens at the Heritage Food Crops Research Trust.
This charitable trust researches early prevention and treatment of disease through the medicinal properties of plant-based food and natural plant-based medicine.
Alex and I dropped in on a Monday, when a team of volunteers gather to help Mark with the many tasks on the 2ha Springvale property. Alex was wide-eyed as Mark toured us through his orchards ("I've never seen so many apples," he whispered), and was equally struck by volunteers' enthusiasm.
I also organised a tour through MacBlack's exceptional forestry block at Papaiti. No pines here - this is a 20ha planting of mixed, high-value timbers Richard Thompson and his wife Laurel began planting 26 years ago.
The land is covenanted to remain under continuous canopy cover which means selective logging and constant replanting. This is an exciting alternative forestry model that offers multiple benefits and could be readily replicated in our region.
While our climate and what we grow is radically different from the high altitude tropics where Alex's family live, there are some sobering things New Zealand and Mexico have in common. Diabetes rates are soaring there, too, and for the same reasons: modern, processed foods and sugary drinks.
Open cast and strip mining is devastating rural areas in Mexico. There is less regulatory oversight and a previous government granted secret leases to foreign mining companies to large tracts of land occupied by indigenous people.
I learned of this as the Environmental Protection Agency hearings into Trans-Tasman Resources seabed mining application drag on (for the second time), hearing submitter after submitter object to its proposal. Yet the government is all for the exploitation of these mineral resources and the pressure on the EPA is immense.
There has been considerable media coverage recently about abuses of work exchange schemes. WWOOF is being unfairly singled out because there are a number of imitators that match hosts with volunteers, who offer a few hours work a day in exchange for room and board.
Its original purpose was laudable, providing a way for people to learn about organic farming before formal training was available.
There's no doubt that such schemes are sometimes being abused and the Ministry for Primary Industries is right to be investigating.
I have heard first-hand of farms, cafes and retreat centres keeping teams of wwoofers serving as kitchen hands, waiters, cooks, labourers and cleaners. This distorts the intention of the scheme.
But the ministry shouldn't use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and if WWOOF and other schemes are shut down altogether, it would be a stupid loss.
I value what I have learned of other countries and cultures through having volunteers in my home as guests - this week offered the unforgettable opportunity of drinking coffee made by the person who grew, picked, dried, roasted and ground it himself. Superb.
And it's heart-warming to hear from wwoofers about what they've learned in New Zealand and how it influences their lives and thinking.
www.macblack.co.nz/our-forest/
www.heritagefoodcrops.org.nz
www.kasm.org.nz/latest/trans-tasman-resources-unreasonable-request/
■ Rachel Rose is a writer, gardener, fermenter and fomenter