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Coffee Not Bombs
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.
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