32. Field Notes 9: Maraba Washing Station - where it all started

Monday, May 25 - PM
Maraba Washing Station

I believe Maraba is Rwanda's "first" washing station.  If it is not technically Rwanda's first, it is certainly the first in spirit. It was built by the PEARL project, 2003 - 2006, which was a ground-breaking milestone in global coffee, not just Rwandan coffee, because it showed how a multi-disciplinary value chain approach can be implemented with a high degree of success. The "success" being that this country that had 0 (zero) washing stations prior to 2003 now has 240. The project launched a movement, you might say.

I only have my own suspicions about what contributed to this success. It was not one person or one organization, it was a team of highly motivated and very gifted actors who worked very hard under the auspicies of supportive government policies. But it is also not inconsequential that the leader of the program had very deep ties and many years of experience in Rwanda, as well as the academic stature and unique, highly developed field research skills. I'm speaking of Dan Clay, a professor at Michigan State University who spends about a third of each year on the ground in Africa, doing field research. Full disclosure, he also happens to be my academic advisor, so I'm biased.

Today Maraba needs revitalization. It's equipment appears to be in disrepair, the atmosphere among the workers did not seem upbeat, the reputation of the washing station among farmers was not great. I interviewed farmers in May 2015 who were walking past Maraba with their cherry in order to go to a different washing they felt "served them better."  But Maraba is in operation and achieving huge volumes of beautiful coffees and we saw farmers delivering amazingly beautiful red cherry. They have the large number of fermentation tanks you see below, which enables sorting and tracking of lots beyond what smaller stations can manage.

I see a bright future for Maraba and Rwandan coffee in general!

28. Field Notes 5: BUF Coffee and a nearby collection site

May 21, 2015  -- BUF COFFEE  Nyarusiza

I’ve heard about BUF Coffee from numerous roasters’ blogs and from the pages of PEARL and SPREAD history. It seemed like a sign to me when I met Sam Nwitwe, the son of BUF’s owner Epiphane Mukashyaka, at SCAA Seattle in April. “Please visit,” he said. So I gave him a call.

Augustin, Grace and I took a Volcano bus from Huye to Kizi, where we switched to motos. The moto ride through the mountains on rutted dirt roads took about 30 minutes. Some of this way was so steep I was surprised the moto driver was able to keep the bike balanced.

Value Chain Insights

At the washing station there were 14 farmers assembled to talk to us. I only asked four basic questions: # of years as a farmer, # of trees and # of people from each person first. For the discussion question, “do you see a future in coffee?” there was one pessimistic and several optimistic answers.

Farmer meeting assembled at BUF Coffee

In the village we found one of the farmers again – the one who is also a site collector. I interviewed the young woman farmer who was at the site to deliver cherry. She was getting 200 Rwf and didn’t seem to know there was an option to deliver cherry for 210 Rwf by taking it up the hill to the CWS. She, like all the other farmers there, spent at least 20 – 30 minutes sorting cherry on the patio of the site collector’s building. She said there was never a better price for more quality cherry. She said all cherry had to be mature – no exceptions.

We talked to the site collector also, since he is also a farmer with many trees. Seemed like he was doing very well. Sells ordinary, too. He had a large bag of ordinary in the shop. He rents a hand depulper for making ordinary. He said a company goes around the country side renting these small machines to farmers.

At the washing station two things made me pause: the time farmers were spending sitting on the ground sorting cherry and manual removal of cherry from parchment after the coffee has come through a depulper. This scenario was especially strange because there was a person standing ankle-deep in wet parchment, in a tank, picking out the ones where the skins had failed to be removed by the depulper. The quality manager explained that they need to get them out because if they stay on during fermentation, it will taint the taste of the entire batch. I believe him. And I don't think BUF is unusual. The "result" after depulping at most washing stations is "red-spotted". But it still seems odd. Why can't the depulper more thoroughly remove all the pulp?

Another thing that made me not only pause, but made my mouth water, was the beautiful quality of cherry that farmers were delivering while we were there (see photos below).