At dawn, the sun pops up like a fly ball and hangs overhead all day, much higher in the sky than a Minneapolis noon. Only half the Big Dipper breaks the northern horizon here, and thin files of red volcanic dust lie along railings, on wiper blades. I'm in Nicaragua.

The Wedge sent me here to take part in Equal Exchange's Nicaragua Tour 2002. We were a collection of nine Americans and one Canadian, invited by Equal Exchange to see Fair Trade in action with three organic coffee cooperatives. The tour wound through cloudy, mountain jungles and hot plains, and, of course, there was coffee. It's everywhere in Nicaragua: Lift those leaves and see red berries bulging in a neat row down the arm of a deep green bough.

Steve Cooke, one of my fellow tourists and General Manager of Sevananda Co-op in Atlanta, is sitting on the curb in front of Cecocafen Cooperative's main office. It's early evening in the city of Matagalpa, and he's talking to a man while kids play a pick up game of street soccer. The Nicaraguan wants to know what an American thinks of his country. Steve tells him that Nicaragua has gorgeous terrain and the people have been shockingly kind to us, given our nationality, and they show great resilience, perseverance. But he thinks Nicaraguans are sad in their hearts. The guy nods as if the American has pinned the situation too accurately.

It's early on in the trip, so Steve is probably reacting more to the capital city of Managua, not Nicaragua as a whole. Managua, where we began the tour, is near apocalyptic collapse. Its East Market is the hub of criminal activity in Nicaragua and garbage is dumped there in great heaps for foraging. Sweatshops provide the best jobs for most people. Kids wear sniffing-glue on necklaces for easy access (St. Paul's HB Fuller is the glue of choice, as a matter of fact), and mothers feed their babies valium to keep them from squawling with hunger. Where Managua is concerned, I must agree with Steve:

Who can dwell in this hopeless destitution and not feel defeat in their hearts?

Three dictators named Somoza ruled Nicaragua for most of the 20th century. In 1937, strongman Anastazio Somoza pre-empted Nicaragua's first democratic election by killing his opponent, the reform-minded Augusto Cesar Sandino (Sandino is best remembered for capturing the flag of the U.S. Marines when they came to fight for American coffee interests in 1927). Anastasio ruled until 1957 when his son Luis took control, and then Anastazio Jr. assumed command in 1967. The 1972 earthquake marked the "high" point of the younger Anastazio's reign when he skimmed over 80% of the international relief for himself.

This brazen pillaging led to a socialist revolution in 1979, sparked by the Sandinistas who are named for the national hero Sandino. After overthrowing Somoza, the Sandinistas initiated sweeping Land Reform, which wrestled ownership from the six families who owned all the farmland in Nicaragua and turned it over to small, farming cooperatives. For a brief moment in history, the farmers were in control of their own land and Nicaragua's economy.

But then came the eighties and the world's two superpowers squared off in Nicaragua. The Soviet Union had old connections to Nicaragua through Cuba, and Reagan vowed to prevent Russia from getting a foothold here. America funded the Contra movement (which specifically targeted the co-op farms) and issued an economic embargo against Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega lost re-election in 1990 because, while the people deeply supported the Sandinistas (and still do), the embargo was too devastating to endure.

But in the twelve years since the U.S. embargo was lifted, nothing has improved here. Eighty percent of Nicaragua now lives in abject poverty. The average annual income is $500. U.S. industry has arrived, true, but only because Nicaragua offers little regulation: As a result, the Gap hires workers at nothing wages and dumps ink from their factories right into Lake Managua (home to the only species of fresh-water shark in the world).

In 1995, Nicaragua took the U.S. to the World Court in The Hague, demanding reparations for the costs of the Contra war and the embargo. The Hague ruled in favor of Nicaragua, ordering the U.S. to pay $17 billion in restitution, which of course, is $17 billion that Nicaragua will never see.

And to this day, downtown Managua remains in ruins from the 1972 earthquake.

I'm on the mountain slope of a lush coffee farm, and Pedro Haslam stands nearby, gesturing to a big blue barrel. "Forty liters molasses," he tells us, ticking off the ingredients. "Forty liters of milk and forty liters of cow manure. All organic. OCIA certified."

I've seen this curious behavior before. Larry Jacobs of Del Cabo Organic Farms, the grower that gives The Wedge such sweet cherry tomatoes in the dead of winter, once spoke similarly of sawdust and goat droppings. It's the unabashed pride of an organic farmer describing his fertilizer.

A kind-faced man with a thin moustache, Pedro says, "We mix twenty liters of water with twenty liters of this fertilizer and apply it to the coffee plants every month." He jerks a thumb toward the young, year-old plants behind him. Then he says something that makes the translator laugh, but she's too polite to translate a key word.

Finally she paraphrases: "Strong soil means strong plants."

I laugh. My Spanish is rickety, but I'm pretty sure Pedro didn't say soil.

Though Pedro's words aren't translated literally, I get the message. Pedro is the General Manager of Cecocafen Cooperative and he said something strikingly similar when he showed us a plaque declaring Cecocafen's "gold check" credit rating. This impeccable rating is imparted to the co-op's "base," that is, the farming membership who otherwise could not receive a centavo of credit from the Nicaragua government. As a result, co-op members can get farm loans that don't come due for four years, when the coffee plants mature and start producing berries. The relationship between people and coffee, farmer and cooperative, is an economic and ecological life cycle in Nicaragua.

"Empower the base," Pedro explained, "and Cecocafen is strengthened, too."

This theme was repeated a few days later when we toured Prodecoop, a coffee cooperative in Esteli. General Manager Merling Preza, a stern woman with a surprising smile, described how important high-quality coffee is to Prodecoop and its coffee growers. If the farming members are more profitable (individual farmers receive up to 150% more money for their fair trade coffee), then they have more capital to reinvest in the cooperative. In turn, a financially strong co-op can offer social services to its members, services that the government is ill-equipped to provide: childhood nutrition programs, clinics, women's healthcare, scholarships, and the constant improvement of organic coffee production. "Better quality of organic coffee," as Merling put it, "means a better quality of life for us."

On the lush mountain slope, I can hear little kids laughing in the jungle farm while Pedro moves on to show us the compost beds. The beery smell of the fertilizer is everywhere now that I've smelled it.

Francisco Javier rescues orchids. He's a handsome young man of twenty who wears a Che Guevara pendant around his neck and when he speaks about flowers, his voice raises in pitch and passion. We're in Miraflor Cooperative, now, about 6000 feet up in the mountains of northern Nicaragua. It's both a coffee co-op and a nature preserve, and promoting ecotourism for bird-watchers and scientists is one of the ways this cooperative is developing respect for the land in its young people. Francisco takes us on a mile-long survey of Miraflor's orchids and along the way we see processions of leaf-cutter ants, transparent butterflies, flashes of iridescent green feathers. And of course, lots of orchids growing in all their alien glory.

After Francisco's orchid tour ends, tour-member Robert from Florida, says, "I have something I want to tell you all." He takes off his cap and works the brim in his hands. "I have something I want to say."

We know Robert as a smart, quick-to-laugh guy. The rest of us glance at each other under our brows, wondering what's up.

"I just realized," said Robert, taking deep breaths, "that yesterday was the one year anniversary of my father's death." Deep breath. "He loved to collect orchids."

Then it pours. With Cory holding him, Robert's sobs come out loud and strong. This is the kind of thing that a tight-knit tour-group can digest easily, but I glance at the Nicaraguans, and by the looks on their faces, none of them understood what Robert said. It's late in the trip. My Spanish has come around nicely, so I translate to the nearest man, the president of Miraflor's coffee board. His head lolls to one side, eyes closed in sympathy for Robert.

Young Francisco overhears me but his expression is unreadable. Is Francisco baffled by the man's big show of emotion? Slightly contemptuous? Worried? Whatever it is, he's watching Robert intently.

A day later we're leaving Miraflor and we have a group check-out with the Nicaraguans; it's a lovefest. We adore Miraflor's mix of cooperation, organic coffee farming, and ecological conservation, and they deeply appreciate meeting the people who sell their coffee in the States and Canada.

Then Francisco speaks up. Along with orchid recovery, he's the president of the junior assembly, comprised of Miraflor's older teenagers, and it shows in how well he speaks to this big gathering. He's a young man with a future in this cooperative.

"It has been good to meet all of you, and it makes me want to work harder on the recovery program," he tells us, "knowing how Robert feels about the orchids."

My father came here in 1986 as a reporter. Back then, there was a lot of talk about which of the various players understood the "reality of Nicaragua": The Contras, the Somozistas, the Soviets, the Sandinistas, Ronald Reagan? Which of them could see the "reality of Nicaragua" and bring this country, a geopolitical prize flush with natural resources, to its full potential?

After sixteen years, this question must still be answered, if Nicaragua intends to save itself.

My father fell in the pro-Sandinista camp (not a surprise: people in my hometown referred to him as "that pinko reporter"), so I went to Nicaragua with a similar bias. But after seeing what Equal Exchange had to show me, I think the farming cooperatives are closest to "the reality of Nicaragua." The co-ops here are pulling off a miracle that neither U.S. industry nor strong state communism could perform. Despite a thoroughly ruined economy, the co-ops are dropping roots and finding meaningful work in a country that is otherwise spinning into chaos. The co-ops nurture their members, educate and train them, offer health care to women and children, and otherwise create a functional society that the government here can't afford to build.

And here's the mind-blower: It's all thanks to U.S. and European coffee consumers.

"Organics" and "Fair Trade" are not abstract, lefty concepts to the farmers here. Quite the contrary. Growing organic coffee means growing a sane society out of nothing. Selling their organic coffee at Fair Trade premium prices means helping their families steer clear of the anarchy in places like the East Market of Managua. I find it chilling to imagine where young Francisco might be, if it weren't for his co-op's eco-tours, the junior assembly, and orchids.

True, if it weren't organic coffee, then perhaps these Nicaraguan co-ops would find a different hat from which to pull their miraculous rabbits. Nonetheless, I'm awed by what American fair trade consumers and the coffee cooperatives are creating together in this sad, defeated country: Hope. In the "reality of Nicaragua," I rank this wondrous achievement equal with Nicaragua's other David-versus-Goliath feats: Sandino's victory over the marines and Nicaragua's toppling of Somoza.

No. I rank it higher.

Those fleeting, historical events are important, but they're gone now from the earth. Planting after planting, and harvest after harvest, the cooperatives here are building something sustainable from the soil up.

(Ed. note: Find two varieties of organic Nicaraguan coffee from cooperative growers in the Wedge bulk coffee selection.)