Good Morning – LAKE KIWU!
Not only for early risers, this view of Lake Kivu is stunning. First, a little social media on the balcony and couch, then a bit of coffeekult business during breakfast. Managing orders, roasting, and accounting in Innsbruck also need to be kept in mind, but the strong coffeekult team in Innsbruck ensures that everything is well taken care of.
For this, in between and thus here also highly official, already once a huuuuge THANK YOU to you at home!
But we can reassure everyone: coffeekult is here because of COFFEE and not for the view and we think of course very firmly to all and would grant EVERY SINGLE also this view 🙂
After breakfast, we first go to the KAPAKAMA DRY MILL, which is about an hour’s drive away. Here the green coffee beans from various cooperatives are hulled and sorted according to quality. The halls are ghostly empty today, but of course that has its right and reason.
Since it is harvest time, the cooperatives are naturally a bit busier. Only in mid-May these halls are then full and the green coffee is processed by many hardworking hands. And a mighty MACHINE!
This huge machine is basically a sorting device: First, foreign objects are removed from the coffee beans, then the parchment skin of the coffee cherry, which is a very thin layer that protects the coffee bean. Then the beans are further sorted according to size and weight.
For the cooperatives, this is an incredible reduction in workload.
Since today the workers at the coffeekult visit not much to do, a “Big Smile” photo goes out. These GUYS also belong in front of the camera with their big and contagious smile! In case we haven’t emphasized it enough so far: These people are exactly where the cup of coffee starts! It’s like a clock and the gears.
It is the very small ones who make the big wheels turn, so never forget those who are supposedly “at the bottom”, because they are the real heroes and heroines!
Not only the big machine does its work, but also many helping hands in the upper hall of the Kapakama Dry Mill. Here is normally sorted out by hand, with hundreds of hands and thousands of fingers. The quietness here, due to the harvesting season just taking place on the cooperatives, is a bit spooky, because the hall is really very big. But as mentioned before, soon it will really start!
What particularly pleases coffeekult is that they work inclusively! People with disabilities also find their place here, which is not always a given in Europe and even less so in Rwanda.
There is a wheelchair ramp in the hall!
Furthermore, any kind of discrimination is prohibited, child labor and sexual harassment at the workplace are also strictly forbidden! This is not written somewhere small in agreements or info brochures, but directly at the entrance to the Dry Mill, visible to everyone!
We coffee roasters and, of course, all our customers have a responsibility in this regard. The best coffee is of no use if the basic social conditions are not met. The best payment for the farmers is of no use if there is no HUMANITY!
What is coffeekult doing in Rwanda again? EXACTLY: not only – in good Tyrolean terms – “herumgschafteln”, i.e. to interfere, but to meet the many hard-working people directly AT THE COFFEE WELL at eye level and of course also to look the employers and employers on the fingers, for a good cooperation and fairness!
This angular and high box table looks a bit strange, but it can be found in all coffee processing plants. This is the “cupping station” and here people sip for all they’re worth. The traders always want to taste the variously prepared beans and varieties immediately on the spot.
For this purpose, a “cupping” is carried out, a professional evaluation of coffee. With a large and deeper spoon, you then slurp freshly brewed coffee quite loudly and spit it out again. This is actually what laymen notice first, but of course it’s much more complicated than that.
“A coffee journey is exciting, not only because of wild boat rides, as in the blog post from DAY 3, but also due to some car rides.”
On the return trip to Kigali, duration about 3 hours, there are tremendous views, but also insights. Insights in the form of holes in the roads and in this very hilly country it goes up once and then down again, of course, no brake can stand for long and so our car brake has then a little gasped and smoked…….
But after a short stop and rest, we could then continue again chilled. coffeekult likes light smoke, but only when it is associated with coffee. So in that brief moment of coffee roasting, when you let the frrrrry roasted coffee beans tumble out into the container to cool down. Smoke associated with wonderful smell of coffee 🙂
Three hours of driving and a small breakdown break, then you almost feel a little sorry for yourself, because one thing is missing coffeekult of course quite urgently: COFFEE.
There is shortly before Kigali again at Stafford Coffee. This is also urgently necessary, because the journey with largely open window, brings again and again whirled up sand into the car and thus into the mouth. If the teeth touch, one often feels a crunching of the rubbing mini grains of sand. Coffee, on the other hand, is great medicine!
Speaking of sand, the soil here is mostly RED, clay soil. When it rains, the small torrents along the roads turn reddish, a wonderful play of color.
And what else has caught our attention, which we completely missed on the way there:
This beautiful and hip coffee-bike table at Stafford Coffee!
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THE PHOTO ONCE: Does that look familiar to anyone, has anyone seen it somewhere in Innsbruck before?
The first attentive reader who can answer this can pick up a pack of coffeekult coffee from Rwanda from us. Please send sighting hints with a description directly via email to: info@coffeekult.com
Back in Rwanda’s capital Kigali we get to experience HISTORY once again!
We check in at the Hôtel des Mille Collines. Never heard of it? Oh yes, surely many know it from the world-famous movie “HOTEL RWANDA”.
A more than moving story once again allows us to take a glimpse into the soul of this country. We are humbled by the “cold information” about the Hôtel des Mille Collines that can be read on Wikipedia.
This evening is ours. Josias and his charming family let us take part in their lives, with good food, pleasant conversations, and the Rwandan way of life.
We don’t have to write about everything! 😉
