Rwanda really taught me a lot about coffee, the land and the love for the raw material.
This is what happened and what I learnt!
In January, I was called, together with Alberto Polojac and Francesco Masciullo, by ICU (Istituto per la Cooperazione Universitaria Onlus) to participate in a week-long mission to train the country’s Washing Station managers.
The mission is part of a larger project, carried out for ten years now, concerning Coffee Value Chain Development.
The aim is to improve the quality and quantity of coffee produced by smallholder farmers, strengthening coffee farms and cooperatives to build more sustainable businesses, facilitating access to finance and increasing the visibility of Rwandan coffee on the international market.
For this ICU works with over 12,000 farmers and 20 coffee washing stations in 12 national districts.
Having said that, our role was to train the Washing Stations, i.e. the cooperatives to which the farmers bring the coffee fruits, to process them and get the beans ready for export. Both to increase the quality of the harvest and processing, and to make them aware of the real value of their coffee and thus sell it at a fair price.
But the surprise is that they have learned as much from us trainers as we have from them!
What I learnt
1.Recognising coffee defects is nerve-racking work
Perhaps the most tedious and patience-consuming phase is the sorting phase: having to stand there looking at kernel by kernel and removing all the bad ones, categorising them, counting them and scoring them is really exhausting.
I don’t envy the people in charge in the least, who, in order to allow us to drink excellent coffee, pick up bean by bean and remove the faulty ones.
2. Quality is objective, never subjective!
It does not take study, knowledge or experience to recognise a quality coffee from a bad one, you can see it at a glance!
That is why I always make a point of saying that quality is not a subjective matter, but can be assessed OBJECTIVELY!
In addition to your personal taste, you have to evaluate the goodness of the beans, the number of defects, contamination and what they can express once roasted and extracted.
If it tastes like ash, mould, potato, wood or the like, you can say what you like, but it is not quality!
If the beans are unripe, broken, hollow, mouldy, rotten or infested with insects, it doesn’t matter if you like it in the cup after all, it is still bad coffee!
Here are just a few sample images!
Do you see that in the first picture there are woods, rotten and dried beans, brown instead of green, with even the presence of foreign bodies? This is a coffee that in the cup will only produce many negative and really annoying aromas, such as great bitterness, astringency, notes of burnt wood and mould, dampness and metallic hints.
Also in the second photo you can see on the left the selected beans, homogeneous, clear and clean, while on the right the unselected batch, still full of defects.
3.Along the supply chain you have to know how to do a bit of everything
A farmer cannot stop at sowing and harvesting, a roaster cannot stop at cooking, and a barista cannot stop at making good coffee.
For example, a farmer must also know how to process and process coffee after the harvest if he wants to obtain quality beans suitable for the different processing methods.
Whoever processes the harvested fruit must also know how to roast and taste coffee in a highly professional manner.
How could he know whether he has worked well or badly, if he does not know how to cook the bean in order to taste it, and if he does not know how to taste a coffee?
A roaster must also be a skilled barista and taster, as well as a connoisseur of the raw material in order to be able to roast it in the best possible way and according to the specific requirements of that batch.
And so the bartender must also know the roasted product and how it should be prepared and tasted, to be able to check that he has done a good job!
4.Even in a country considered ‘poor’, espresso costs more than in Italy
Rwanda is actually a very developed state in Africa, where on average the population is well off, has jobs and accessible services.
Of course this is much easier to find in the main city, rather than in rural communities, but compared to other African states, Rwanda is on average very developed.
When compared to Italy, however, there is still a lack of certain protections and services available to the vast majority of people, with much lower salaries than us and a cost of living not so much lower.
Despite all this, even in Rwanda the espresso costs more than € 1.00!
How is it possible that only in Italy are we so tied to a low cup price?
Look at the beauty of their premises, specifically here we were in Kivu Noir:
5.Rwandan women are strong, empowered and leading many businesses
This was perhaps one of the things that surprised me the most!
Without much education on gender equality, Rwandan women are considered equal to men, so much so that they are strong and independent, run successful businesses, families and establishments, do all kinds of work and really bring about differences and structural changes in their communities.
I have seen women on construction sites along the roads or as truck drivers, I have seen them collaborating with men in schools and hospitals, I have seen them leading government research and development agencies, teams related to innovation and infrastructure and of course also leading plantations and washing stations.
Here is an example: Agnes from the Nova coffee processing center, part of the Women in coffee project and active in the development of her community.
In fact, entire villages populated by the workers of the plantations and cooperatives develop around them.
For this reason, Agnes has built houses, wells and hospitals, as well as a free nursery where all her employees and others can leave their children between 2 and 6 years old during the working day.
It also organizes evenings and meetings to educate people on the healthy growth of their children, gender equality and the importance of studying before working!
Here are some photos:
6. Coffee drupes release an intense and delicious aroma during drying
I wish I could take you all with me to a plantation to let you smell the coffee fruits.
We are starting to perceive it in new ways: no longer as a dark and bitter drink, but as something born of nature, a very sweet and lively fruit!
7. Those who work in coffee do it with passion
For this last point I report the words of Toussaint, one of our training companions, as well as owner of the washing station Coocamu:
“It is a real privilege to be surrounded by people who truly understand and appreciate the beauty of coffee. On the fifth day we had the wonderful experience of exploring together the processing of coffee. Alberto, Martina and Francesco made us discover three different methods: washed, honey and natural. It is incredible how coffee creates relationships and unites us all over the world!”
It is true!
When you work coffee this way, passion and love are tangible. We immediately find the thing that unites us all, the common language and the desire to communicate it, because at the base of coffee there are precisely human relationships and sharing.
Thank you all for this amazing experience!
Marketing, E-commerce e Social Media Manager
Coffee Lover
