We took the coffee samples that we've collected to be processed nearby on Tuesday. We collected them as parchment so they need to be processed into green and then hand sorted so that we only have the good stuff. Jean Marie was visiting South Africa, but emailed me to tell me that we needed some inner tubes to remove the parchment and I imagined that the machine used rubber somehow to remove it. In fact there is no machine and instead our workers fill one third of an inner tube and then roll it on the floor with their foot to break the parchment. They can only fit about 150 g in at a time and so considering that we have 350 kg to get through, it's going to be a while until we can roast anything! Next door to the lab where our samples are being prepared is the real dry mill where coops can take their parchment and get it processed into green. Having seen that in action, I've seen every step of the journey coffee takes in Rwanda. Here's some guys loading the machine with parchment:
I helped Jan harvest his soy beans this week too – the same ones that I had a photo of last time. It was nice to do something relatively physical for a change instead of having someone else do everything! I spent a fair while trying to chase monkeys away who were trying to eat the beans before we could pick them. Unfortunately they're not very scared of people and even after throwing sticks at them and making lots of noise, as soon as we left their sight they would climb down from the trees again. One of the cheeky monkeys
So, as I said at the beginning I had hoped to restart weekly updates, but then I had a dodgy brochette which made me ill. I won't make things too graphic, but I was glad that there is a drain in the floor of my bathroom so that I could multitask. Fortunately it wasn't too bad and I was feeling better later on the same day. I think I'm going to have to give brochettes a miss for a while though, which is a shame, especially for my wallet as they are the cheapest food going. As I was lying in bed recovering, Jean Marie rang me to tell me that he wanted me to go to Uganda the next day and would need to leave in a few hours! It was a very unpleasant bus journey to Kigali as I hadn't eaten, was sat above the wheel (no leg room) with two bags and my ipod decided not to work – maybe the washing of it has hurt it more than I thought. To make things worse it was raining (as it had been all day – so much for the dry season) which meant that it took the best part of 3 hours instead of the normal 2. On the bright side, the hotel I was told to stay at was about 3 minutes walk from the best pizzas in Rwanda, which really sorted my stomach out nicely.
The reason to go was to learn about intercropping coffee with bananas. It's the norm in Uganda and research has found farmers can get the same yield of coffee and bananas when they are grown together, as if they grow them separately. Fairly obviously, it means they can make about twice as much money from the same area of land. In Rwanda and Burundi however, the government policies have been to stop farmers intercropping coffee with anything, even going so far as to uproot crops from farmers fields who try it. The main reason for it is that they thought that the coffee yield would decrease, resulting in less revenue for the government, rather than caring about the farmer. It's fairly understandable when coffee is such a huge proportion of their foreign revenue, but doesn't appear to be rational and they have far higher population densities than Uganda, so really need to produce as much food as possible.
Uganda was an interesting change from Rwanda. It's much more reminiscent of England (no surprise really as it was a colony) as they drive on the proper side of the road, have English plugs and there is quite a lot of land that is not farmed (and they all speak English). Not being a Belgian colony though there are no chips! Going off on a tangent... something I've been meaning to let you know about is that the Rwandan's have problems pronouncing their Rs, changing them to Ls – the result of which is that fries become flies and rice becomes lice. Anyway back to Uganda: It was really interesting to see how different the farming systems are, when the countries are so close. Farmers are much more free to plant what they like where they like and unlike in Rwanda and Burundi, farmers have chosen to plant coffee, rather than being forced to by colonialists and then their governments. The farmers we met also only grew coffee and bananas, whereas here coffee is a small part of the whole farm. Here, very few coffee farmers really know what they are doing in terms of managing the crop, meaning that they don't prune correctly or fertilise, making their yields crap. Another big difference with Ugandan coffee is that they sun dry the cherries like we have done here. For some reason though they get completely covered in mould though and the quality is fairly obviously reduced. I couldn't find out why, as even when we kept ours inside sweating away it stayed ok.
I came back richer than I left which was nice too – we got $20 a day when we where in Uganda, even though we only had to pay for dinner and beer. Then on the border a guy couldn't use his calculator and ended up giving me two and a half times more cash than he should have done! It was only for $20 but it was a nice bonus. I had more dollars but the rate they offered was bad compared to Kigali so I said no, but then one of them chased after me across the border and gave me a better rate than in Kigali. I've found that walking away is the best way to get a good deal here (not sure if I've mentioned it before) if motorbike taxis want too much (more than 30p in the day and 40p at night) you can just tell them you'll walk – as soon as you take two steps they pull up and tell you to get on for the proper price! Just remembered another thing I was meaning to write – evidently in school the first (and maybe only) English phrase kids are taught is “good morning” but they're not taught what it means and so say it at all times of the day. I tried to explain to some once they should say good afternoon, using my brilliant Kinyarwandan but unfortunately it didn't work. I tend to reply with mwaramutse (good morning) too now instead. One did actually say good afternoon to me once as I cycled past and I almost fell off my bike in shock. Saying that, I know that I've been caught out saying bonjour in the evening in France...
Think I've made up for not posting last week now.
No comments:
Post a Comment