Rwanda
Sovu

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    • Day 6

      Deep diving

      June 2, 2023 in Rwanda ⋅ ☁️ 18 °C

      Today was the longest Friday I had since a while, an 11h long day full of new experiences. New stages of the coffee production : floating and washing (workers freaked out seeing me at 7.30 in the morning, they got instructed to let me jump into the water and do the job next time ;) ). Then finally breaking ice with sorting ladies, some learned my name and stopped just calling me muzungu. And last but not least first sample roasting, which will be a big part of my work next week. On top of that - after work beer with colleagues in a local bar in the village. Hard to believe that I live here for only 5 days!Read more

    • Day 2

      Huye Coffee Mountain, day 1

      May 29, 2023 in Rwanda ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

      Starting day with a long trip to the southern border of Rwanda, to the small town Huye, where I'm going to spend next 3 weeks. All formalities done, first and last day of being a tourist here :)

      Surprising topic of the day - bikes, bikes everywhere! I never have seen so many of them in a single African country than in the Land of Thousand Hills. Used for everything, they can also transport heavy stuff, like furniture, bricks or ... coffee ;)
      Read more

    • Day 10

      Dry jobs and wet jobs

      June 6, 2023 in Rwanda ⋅ ☁️ 24 °C

      Days full of different jobs: dry ones ( roasting, packaging and dealing coffee for the local market) and very wet ones (depulping coffee cherries and placing them in the fermentation tanks). Lesson of the day - all the sorting I was doing till now was only for natural processed coffee, the washed one is sorted AFTER depulping and washing so without the fruit. Every day I see more and more complexity in this process and multiple levels of filtering / grading the product, that is "just a cup of coffee" in Europe. So much knowledge that the consumers have no idea about!Read more

    • Day 20

      It's all about people!

      June 16, 2023 in Rwanda ⋅ ☁️ 23 °C

      My time in Huye is slowly going to an end. Everything that I experienced here, all upd and downs, happy and sad stories will probably find a place in some bigger piece of writing.
      But in the last post from here I would like to honor all the people that made this stay so special, cause in the end it's ALL about the people :)

      In a very random order, as the pictures are:

      - Eric, my guardian angel from the first to the last day, who became a friend for life and maybe even a business partner in the future. I could write the whole post about this guy, but I would rather link you there, to our fundraising action, please donate: https://gofund.me/f035d2bc

      - Aaron, who spent so much time with me roasting, packaging and grinding coffee and was first enthusiast of Aeropress in HMC

      - Rachel, who let me get deeper into the cupping and profile roasting, so I could really understand these last stages of coffee production. So many patience for my bad roasts ;)

      - Monique and Damascene, people doing so important work in data collection, bringing me so much inspiration for future projects. Plus pushing me to speak Kinyarwanda;)

      - Jonatan, unexpected bus buddy and the source of my social life in Huye, including long discussions about politics and future of the world

      - Mami, the one and only local friend, that helped me to get around in the town and brought so much insides about the present and past Rwanda

      -Jaques, the best, kindest and safest Mototaxi driver in whole country

      - last but not least ( and without the picture) : David , who made all of this possible in the first place!

      Of course there were way more people involved - workers, helpful folks in village, inspiring tourists on the tours - I'm not able to write about everyone without writing a book!

      If you missed it reading - donate to Eric ;)

      Stay tuned for the next adventure, on Saturday I'm on the way to Kitabi!
      Read more

    • Day 11

      Why is it called washing station?

      June 7, 2023 in Rwanda ⋅ 🌙 18 °C

      After multiple corrections finally I have enough material to answer a very common mistake: no, I'm neither working on the coffee plantation nor the coffee farm. It's a washing station, so the place that gathers, process and evaluates the coffee from different farmers. Washing is one of the processing methods and I was super lucky to be able to actually take part in it :) winning not only knowledge, but also respect of another group of workers. With some bonus muscle pain ;)Read more

    • Day 4

      From the seed to the cup

      May 31, 2023 in Rwanda ⋅ 🌙 18 °C

      Highest chance to get my hands dirty - finally I got a chance to work with sorting the cherries, a very crucial part of the process to get high quality speciality coffee. "Strange Muzungu" was the description I got from the workers, but after a few hours I also learned that I'm "good at it" ;) It's hard to describe without all the senses - the small or partially fermented coffee, the stickyness of the fruits, never ending chats and laughter in Kinyarwanda. Then afternoon on a very shaky truck to collect the fruits from the farmers, in a very deep province of Rwanda. Every day makes me understand more and more the complex way of coffee until it reaches the cup :)Read more

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