Marlene Galo Pérez

It is worthy to underline the importance of the participation of women in activities that traditionally have been carried out by men. To assume the roll of mother and wife has not been enough for Marlene Galo, whom we consider a special character.

With only 25 years old, she is probably the youngest coffee producer among all the producers of Nueva Segovia. She also studies in the University of Ocotal (the capital of Nueva Segovia). When she was 17 years old, she inherited from her father this property. She is the oldest of 4 sisters.

“Since I was a little girl, my father taught me about coffee: the picking, the wet process, to remove the pulp, the dry process…. Well… all that helped me to start my own farm “Linda Vista”. She gave the farm this name because of the high altitude and location in the highest spot of the mountain El Volcán. This mountain is called volcano, because it looks very much like one, except that, instead of lava from its inside springs up crystalline water, right where the river Dipilto and many others are born”.

When Marlene speaks, she becomes quickly the center of attention in any group. She looks dynamic all the time and very creative when speaking about her farm. “Our lands have very high altitude… at the beginning it was difficult to bring out the coffee… it was only possible to carry it out on our shoulders. It took us near two hours to come down from the mountain and it was very risky for the workers”

She continues saying: … “But we’ve already solved the problem. We have placed a line of big pipes (one to one) from the coffee mill down one kilometer (0.60 miles), right to the main road. In the top entrance of the pipe we let the coffee fall with a squirt of water…while at the other end my husband and dad wait for the coffee to place it in bags and it’s taken to the dry mill in trucks”.

Marlene as any young woman has her own goals, which se describes as follows: “do you see this small tree?.... well this is a child of the bigger trees, which gave us the best crop… you will see how in 3 or 4 years this tree will give us many quintales (100 pounds bags) of coffee… and it’s going to be the best coffee of Dipilto” she assures.

Marlene shows us a very small tree that she has cultivated with a lot of love in the back yard of her house. We do not doubt that her spirit of excelling will bring great results.