Troubled veteran pioneers Laotian coffee trade
By Denis D. Gray/AP
American Lee Thorn, plagued for three decades by nightmares of the Vietnam War, samples a cup of “Arabica typica” from the land he once helped bomb, and his face melts into dreamlike bliss.
“I’m telling you, it’s the best coffee in the world,” he says. “I know I’m prejudiced, but I’m totally convinced. It’s unique, it’s different, it’s new.”
If this sounds like a sales pitch, it is. Sort of.
Thorn is pioneering the export of Lao coffee to the United States, hoping Americans will take to it like Starbucks coffee shops. But it’s hardly a get-rich-quick scheme: profits from sales will be used to dig wells, buy medicines and fund other projects Thorn has seeded in one of the world’s poorest nations.
He also hopes Americans drinking his Jhai Lao Coffee will not only have their tastebuds titillated, but consciences pricked, as well, once curiosity about the coffee’s origin is sparked.
The 57-year-old former serviceman says the United States unleashed the greatest aerial bombardment in history, sowed the land with explosives that still maim and kill, and then largely washed its hands of the Southeast Asian country. Thorn could not.
Recently, he exported 1.5 tons of high-quality Arabica typica to the United States, where it will be distributed mostly as samples to potential buyers. He expects retail sales to start by year’s end through his San Francisco-based Jhai Foundation, translated from Lao as “hearts and minds working together.”
Laos is a midget in the coffee world. It produced 13,900 tons last year, compared to world leader Brazil with 1.8 million tons. But Lao coffee, one of the country’s few hard currency earners, fetches some of the highest prices on the world market and notches top scores in blind tastings.
“In Laos, small is beautiful,” said Eric Sisombat, a plantation owner Thorn visited near this southern Laos town in the heart of the coffee-growing region.
Thorn got his first taste of the brew after he arrived in 1998, still searching to relieve a personal guilt and help bring about reconciliation between the onetime enemies.
During the war, Thorn had loaded bombs on U.S. Navy planes flying raids over North Vietnam and Laos, where the United States supported the rightist government against Laotian communist guerrillas and their North Vietnamese allies.
Returning home in 1967, he battled post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism and relentless nightmares of bombs spiraling earthwards to kill groups of children.
These vanished when he began the projects, variously supported by conservative Christians, Laotian communists, Vietnam War veterans and the U.S. Air Force, which flew in 11 tons of medical supplies free of charge. Thorn’s foundation recently installed the first Internet classroom in a secondary school in Laos.
Coffee, he hopes, can lessen his dependence on donors. About half the profits will go to foundation projects, the rest to poor growers and investors in the enterprise. Aid groups going into small-scale business to support their causes, he says, is a growing trend.
Thorn aims to keep his own business modest, specializing in boutique coffee for such outlets as churches and stores selling organic produce, since Lao growers say they use no insecticide and only fertilizer made of buffalo manure, bat guano and mud.
Lack of capital and modern expertise makes for a low-tech industry with small yields per acre. A major slump in world coffee prices in recent years has hurt farmers and forced some plantations to close.
But it’s not all gloom. Boonlap Nhouyvanisvong, president of the Lao Coffee Export Association, tells Thorn the Lao product goes to more than 20 countries, with Western Europe and Japan the biggest buyers.
“Now the world is starting to know Lao coffee. We have many companies writing us,” says Boonlap, Thorn’s main supplier who’s been in the business for 63 years.
“The volcanic soil combined with the climate makes for a coffee that is especially excellent,” Boonlap says, preparing for Thorn what he describes as “the perfect cup of coffee.”
The American waxes lyrical about complex flavors rolling across the tongue, a rich aroma, the earthy, but neither bitter nor acidic, after taste of Lao Arabica typica.
“This is better than asking for donations,” he declares. “I’m in the right business.” |
