adventures in the shadow of kilimanjaro

From the farm the parchment coffee is brought to a curing facility to be de-husked and graded. For KNCU farmers and many others in the region, this curing center is a massive factory in Moshi town with a capacity of 50,000 tons of coffee. If the factory is working efficiently they are processing 8 tons of coffee/hour. When I was there on Thursday it was mostly empty, as the season is over, but there was still some coffee being delivered and sorted and packaged. The machine sorts the coffee by size and density, which determine the different grades, and then it is hand sorted for defects. It is quite an intensive process, and this account fails to do justice to the immensity of the task and the factory.

On Thursday I also observed the coffee auction. The information about each lot of coffee up for sale (seller, size, grade) is projected on a screen and the bidding is silent and electronic. It was kind of boring and I was only slowly getting a sense of what was going on, but it was pretty interesting.

On Friday I accompanied the KNCU organic guy to three primary societies. He was escorting a Dutch woman from Pharm Access, an organization that is looking in to providing health insurance for the farmers utilizing pre-existing community structures like the co-ops. Although the meetings were repetitive and mostly in Swahili, it was good to get out into the country again. It was interesting to learn what Pharm Access is trying to do, and to think about the role of KNCU as a broker between farmers and other services that have nothing to do with coffee farming. The meetings with the primary societies reminded me a lot of the Peace Cells at Buduburam, except much more positive, which shouldn't be surprising but was uplifting for me to see. The highlight of the day was probably getting the phone number of a woman farmer who spoke some English - my hope is to be able to visit her again, and learn more about farming and not just middle-class urban office life in Tanzania.

Saturday I went on a one day safari at Arusha National Park. I saw giraffes and zebras and warthogs and buffalo and monkeys and butterflies and some other animals. The giraffes were the coolest, and very close up. I got a bit of a sunburn and lots and lots of pictures. Now I just need to find the lions and the elephants.