Tag: adventure

  • How not to Loose One’s Mind Crossing African Borders, and Other Useful Things to Know Before Driving to the Center of Africa

     

    I tried to come up with a nice succinct title for my thoughts about the journey from Durban, South Africa to Bujumbura, Burundi. But like the roads I took, it may look like an inch on the map before you but the reality is it’s going to be long, hard and nearly inaccessible by the average driver (reader). Both previous thoughts frustrate Kristy to no end. The drive to Burundi with little to no clue of where I was to stay along the way (or direction I was heading, in all reality) and the writing style that meanders between sentences as long as a Tanzanian highway and ever changing tenses.

    My journey of 5700 km (3,541 miles for you Americans) started as a fun tandem with friend and fellow Hope Church-ite, and French speaking Burundian, Alain.  The journey ended in a sort of race against darkness and a battle of nerves with drunk soldiers at the edge of Bujumbura.

    The start was 2 weeks late.  The reason being that newly purchased used vehicles need their log-book to get through borders.  My log book was doing African time wadding through the red tape of South African banks and Currier services.  The “I’ll make a plan” attitude of the shoot from the hip good-ol’ boy I bought my 2000 Toyota Land Cruiser Prado from didn’t exactly speed the process.  By the time it arrived my heart was already in the hills of Burundi, my mind on coffee, and my wife about ready to have an anxiety attack with the  sure mountain of details my optimistic and adventure ready self failed to attend to.  She mentioned food would be good thing to bring. Yes, and that I should actually should buy a map.  She also suggested plates and silverware/cutlery might be useful.  I could continue, but for my sake lets just say I’m thankful that my wife made me bring along a roll of toilet paper just in case.

    Morning 1. Tuesday.

    4:30 am start.  Shelly the creative director/videographer is at the gate to video me pulling off into the pre-dawn to fetch Alain.  The night before we were meant to leave but a very unpleasant phone-call about the sure death of Ella if we fly her to Burundi made it less then ideal to hit the road.  I made  a great call, a morning start was much better.  My good friend Cyril and I had spent the better part of Saturday loading the 4X4 with more house hold and coffee lab supplies then you can imagine.  No really.  Imagine….. your wrong, it’s more.  A couple more hours rest, family time and what I didn’t realize was to be my last good meal in a week took place.

    Alain loaded.  One small bag, still too big for the 10 inch of luxury (read luggage) space I allocated each of us.  Oh, and the nearly 150 lbs welding machine we squeezed on top of the already loaded roof rack.  Open road.  Full Land Cruiser.  No coffee.  Yet.

    West coast to northern South African border never was reached so quickly.  We two men… no, road warriors. A dynamic partnership meant to be.  What could stop us?  Botswana by dusk was our war cry.  We might make Burundi in 5-6 days!  This sunset banter was tossed around as we dodged flipped burning petrol trucks, police wielding speed cameras and finding the black elixir (coffee) half way in the coldest place in South Africa, Harrismith, Free State.

    Then the border. 7pm.  Dark.  Ominous in the glow of  flickering florescent bulbs.

    The first border.

    The easy border.

    The border that beat us and nearly sent me home.

    Alain was denied entry to Botswana.

     

    Coffee Guy

     

  • Huntin’ Monkeys

    My brother came by for a visit a few weeks ago (he just hopped on a quick 30 hr flight to get here) and on his last day with us he had one request: monkeys. He wanted to see MONKEYS! To us, monkeys are a little like the neighborhood skunk that everybody hates. Annoying, a little bit dangerous, totally unpredictable and really hard to find if you are looking for them. Looking for them is like looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s like that Forrest Gump line, “You never know what you’re gonna get.”

    We packed up and went-a-huntin’ and as usual, I was totally the sceptical one. Whining on about how we might never find them, until we practically ran over them in the road five minutes after the hunt began. Sometimes, things seem a lot harder in the beginning than they actually are. I keep telling myself that in these last days before the big move. I’m especially hoping it’s true re learning French!

    Here’s what’s goin’ on:

    • Our beloved Jeep finally sold, to friends who are more like family.
    • Last Friday Ben brought home a ’99 Land Cruiser (pics coming soon). This will be our vehicle in Burundi, and Ben leaves to drive it from here (Durban, South Africa) to there (Bujumbura, Burundi) in just a few days. The drive itself will take about a week.
    • Yesterday Ben was in Cape Town, just for the day, to meet with some lovely people from Starbucks (Hi, guys!) about our project in Burundi.
    • We just found out, as we are about to move, that we have been granted permanent residency in South Africa. This is a big deal for us as a family. We feel so connected to South Africa that it just feels right to be permanent residents.
    • We set a for-sure-no-going-back moving date. The 23rd of June. It’s on people, it’s on.
    • My bedroom is covered with packed plastic bins that I am convinced will fit in the back of the Land Cruiser.
    • We found someone, after loooots of searching, who is willing to fly our Great Dane from Durban to Bujumbura.

    Do you follow us on Twitter and are you a fan on Facebook? If not, we would love it if you would! With all this activity and so little time to type, right now it’s the best way to find out what’s up with us.

    It’s the final days and our heads are swollen with details and our hearts are bogged down with the strain of goodbyes. Despite the stress, we are finding time to laugh with good friends and wrestle with the boys. Breathing deeply these last moments in South Africa, our favorite adopted land.

    Luv,

    Kristy

    photos all scott e. knutson

     

     

     

  • Our little elves

    For the last two weeks we have had the hardest workers you can imagine living in our house and pushing us to get ready for this move! Grandpa came all the way from the US of A to South Africa to help us MOVE IT! My baby brother, who is now known around this house as Uncle Scott, came along for the ride and the two of them transformed our house! They emptied every cupboard, looked us in the eyes and said, “Do you really need this?” They played with the kids, packed boxes, sorted through ten years of our life with us, and went home very tired.

    They have left for the States and there is a big hole in my heart. It seems very lonely here. It is hard and sad to live so far from my family, but the joys of it are this: when we are together, we appreciate it to the nth degree.

    With Ben about to leave to make the drive from South Africa to Burundi in just a few days, I am trying hard to cling to our last moments as a family in this home. This is it folks, just two weeks until we are going to be living in a new land. Today it scares me. There are so many unknowns…. and so many great people we are leaving behind.

    Love,

    Kristy

     

  • These Old Coffee Trees

    I just wrote a seven page report on the intricacies of this season’s Burundi coffee harvest.  I’m not going to let you get it!  If you love coffee, it’s like a good novel that you won’t be able to put down and it might just destroy any hope of productivity you have until you can lay your hands on a freshly brewed mug of this citrus sweet coffee.  That, or you’d be bored out of your mind. Or, you might read two lines and wonder how, despite the continuing social turmoil and simmering political unrest, I can coax tired old Burundi coffee trees and their skittish fearful farmers into producing the worlds best coffee.

    I knew if I was going to pull off finding 48 containers of the champagne of Arabica coffees I couldn’t do it standing still.  So, I was back in the hills of Burundi last week to survey the start of the harvest season and check on my chances for success. I was struck with the raw enthusiasm of the farmers as they poured their baskets of coffee cherries into the large fermentation tanks.  Blood red cherries sinking into tanks of mountain water, drowning, and then resurrected to face the pulping discs and fermentation tanks.  The raw enthusiasm for the start of the harvest was palpable. I was taking part in the start of of something great. The love affair of following coffee from these old trees to your cup.

    It was another week in the heart of Central Africa.  I got another taste of what I’m diving into.  I wonder, will these old trees be able to do it? They are generations too old and the soil is way too thin after one war too many.  Burundi needs new trees… or my dream of a better life for these farmers will not happen.

    Coffee Guy

  • early morning brewing

     

    I miss early morning’s that look like this. Ben making coffee while teaching the four year old proper brewing methods, you know… normal stuff. As Ben is away and the house hunt in Burundi continues, it is beginning to sink in that this is our last breath before the plunge. Our life in South Africa is rapidly coming to a close. It’s weeks now instead of months.

    We have spent a third of our lives here and the community that surrounds us is voluminous. There are people here that it breaks our hearts to leave. Ten years ago, when we left our families and moved to this new place with just four suitcases to our names, we put down roots.  We reached out and built relationships with abandon, and we found a new family. They in no way replace our family in the States, instead they are a whole different family… but no easier to leave behind.

    Luv,

    Kristy

     

  • Riding Burundi Roads at My Peril

    With internet spotty at best up in the highlands of Burundi this post will undoubtably be short.  I just can’t help but share in what is taking place though.  By far the most productive trip yet to Burundi I’m in a celebratory mood.  Except that my sore back, hurting bum and broken ribs (long story about why you shouldn’t play rugby in Burundi with American Marines could be inserted here!) will let my celebrations be limited to a beverage of choice and early to bed.

    The Beauty of Burundi is that I can sit in a “hotel’s” restaurant high in the hills of Burundi and listen to a Jordin Sparks (ya, I didn’t know until I googled her either) song on repeat being beat into my head.  So if I type “just one step at a time….” it’s not my fault.

    The past four days have been filled with incredible scenes of vibrant rolling hills, lush coffee trees pregnant with ripe cherries and aromas ranging from fresh sweet coffee smells to burnt roasting goat.

    I want to tempt your senses to try and imagine fresh(ish) goat being roasted on an open fire with green bananas that taste like potatoes to accompany.  How about hundreds of pounds of freshly harvested coffee cherries piled up ready to be washed clean of their pulp.  Or my favorite aroma of sweaty stinking people piled on top of each other and me as we wind our way up the mountains in a mini bus.

    Where do you drink coffee?  Intelligentsia? Counter Culture?  Stumptown?  Dunn Brothers? Bean There? I’m visiting the very farmers that are producing their best coffee.  It’s a good day in Burundi.  It would be great if Kristy and my adventurer boys were here too.  Just four weeks until we are all here!

    I may never feel or smell the same again.  But my discovery of this black gold is seductive and the hands that are processing it are the poorest and knurliest I have ever laid eyes on.  The adventure has begun.

  • House Hunting In Burundi

    Here’s a clip of Ben’s house hunting efforts last week in Burundi. He didn’t find a house that worked for us, but we are crossing fingers and praying like mad that the right place will come along soon.

    House Hunting in Burundi from longmilescoffee on Vimeo.

  • The Beginning

    Ben began his journey in to help the farmers of Burundi produce better coffee this week. He’s also on the hunt for the best beans Burundi has to offer, so that he can get them into the hands of coffee shops who want to buy directly from farmers.

    Ben’s trip to Burundi this week did not yield a house, but the beginnings of his work with the farmers was a great success.

    What do you think of those roads? Egh? Pretty intense!

    Long Miles Coffee Project from longmilescoffee on Vimeo.

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  • Why Go.

    This little ditty was made because we want you to travel on this adventure with us. We need all the moral support and prayers we can get, we really truly do. And we want you to know why we are making this risk, why we believe it’s worth it.

    Long Miles Coffee Project from Cooked in Africa on Vimeo.

    The guys over at Cooked reworked this little vid for us and we think that’s just great. It was great before, but whew… now it’s a stunner. Shelly of Make My Day Pictures shot all the footage (except the Burundi bits) and became our friend in the process.

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