Tag: bujumbura photographer

  • A Glimpse Inside The Dry Mill

    Let me be honest, and this is a little embarassing as the wife of a coffee aficionado, I just googled “what’s a dry mill.” Even thought I’ve been to one, I’m still not so sure what all the loud machines and grunt work are about.

    The way I see it, the dry mill is the last bit of processing the beans get before they are sent off to their final desitination.

    A few weeks ago the whole family took of to the hills and played around while Coffee Guy did the serious work of overseeing that specific coffee lots were milled correctly. While he was being the quality control guru, we made some new friends… I’ll introduce them to you tomorrow.

     

  • Just when I thought…

    … I totally have this! I’m a rock-star! I can drive, sort of communicate, drop my kid off at a French speaking school every day like it’s no big deal, make friends… life is a breeze! Just at that moment, I realized I don’t have this. At all. After a busy week shuttling Ben and hosting visitors from all over the world for Burundi’s most crucial coffee moment this year, the Burundi Prestige Cup (a precursor to the Cup Of Excellence), and taking Myles to his first week of school… Ben landed up in the hospital. In Burundi. The place every foreigner hopes they never ever end up. A Staph infection. A big one. A cut on Ben’s leg had gotten infected, began poisoning his blood, and soon every tiny little scratch on his body was a festering open wound. Not exactly his prettiest moment, or mine.

    Where we grew up in America, there is a tendency to glorify people who never take time for themselves, those who are truly “selfless.” Why do we do this? The people we should look up to are those who work hard, but have set good boundaries for their lives. There is no glory in not taking time to clean a scratch and ending up in the hospital for a week, possibly needing to be airlifted out to Joburg or Nairobi. No glory at all, and Ben will tell you that.

    In the moment that Ben said “hospital” I knew something had to change. Fear had me by the neck right then. “We need to slow down,” I thought. To take time for the little things. Breathe in the precious gift of air. Let it soak into our souls. Watch that sunset, go to that park, watch the hippos in the surf like we did last night. Be still. Take the time. Work hard, do work that matters, use our time wisely… but build in time for rest and care. That is our lesson, not that every staph infection has to have one. We have hit the ground running so hard that I feel as if I have tumbled over my feet and landed flat on my face. There is nothing glorious about that, but we are getting up… carefully.

  • Sometimes, but not always…

    Sometimes, but not always, I think this might be too hard for me.

    There is a frustration growing in my belly so intense I think I might explode with it.

    It radiates, strengthens with each breath, and flutters around my insides like a caught bird.

    Sometimes, but not always, this world makes me want to scream.

    Loud.

    So I did, and nothing happened

    except a ripple of sourness from it touched every being in its path.

    This world is full of suffering

    corrupt, void of rules, hard, overwhelming, unjust and completely NOT MINE…

    and yet totally mine, intensely beautiful and intensely ugly all at once.

    One of my all time favorite women in the world

    (and second mother to my kids)

    left to return to South Africa today.

    I tried to keep busy after she left.

    I opened my computer to prepare the blog post of a life time.

    Beautiful images from the coffee hills.

    The first time I had been in the hills without a baby on my hip, thanks to her.

    I was met with technical difficulty after technical difficulty.

    It’s just not possible to share them right now.

    This might seem little, and it is, but it rides on the back of something huge.

    Feelings of frustration and aloneness.

    Don’t get me wrong,

    I am getting to know some beautiful souls here in Bujumbura.

    There are people here who have a strength I may never know.

    People with a vast faith in humanity and an amazing capacity for good.

    They are incredible specimens of humanness…

    and yet today,

    as Thobe left, I wanted to run after the car shouting

    “Take me with you!

    Take me home!”

    but there I stood, strangely and insanely rooted to this journey.

    Love,

    Kristy

  • Happy Weekend! Hope you make time to appreciate all the little things that make life great… like underwear.

    Love,

    Kristy

     

  • In The Burundi Coffee Hills

    Let me begin by saying…

    These are the people,
    this is the moment,
    here.we.are.

    I have been feeling as if I owe you, big time. I feel like I owe you lots of images like this one. Images that allow you to see for yourself what the families who grow coffee in Burundi look like.

    Here’s your coffee, freshly picked and still in the cherry. This coffee is honey processed, which means it is picked, left unwashed to preserve every bit of flavor, and then sun dried on these tables.

    Here specialty coffee is being hand sorted. Which means it is being picked through to remove any defects. This coffee will be hand sorted five times. When picked, before being washed, after being fermented, after drying, and after dry milling (which removes the parchment).

    This scale is where a farmer’s lot is determined. Their ripe red cherries are weighed and a price is determined. The price for red cherries? About $.50 a kilo, or $.50 for 2.2 pounds. How can we get the farmers more money? If Ben finds during cupping that the quality of a certian lot is superior enough to be sold as speciality coffee, the farmer who grew it will get a bonus at the end of the season of double or triple per kilo and the coffee will be sold to the likes of Stumptown and Bean There.

    What if Ben wasn’t cupping to find these lots? More and more of the coffee would be sold as commodity lots to big coffee exporters who would turn around and sell it to the likes of Folgers and Maxwell House. They would then mix it with other commodity coffees and the people who drink it would never even know that they were drinking a Burundi coffee, or that the farmer only got $.50 a kilo.

    Of course, the kids are the heart breaking part. Without education, electricity, running water and proper nutrition what hope of a better life than their parent’s can they have?

    If their parents get more for their crop that is a good start to a better life, if the extra funds are managed correctly. But, as we all know, money does not solve everything.

    All that said, I have to tell you… the coffee hills are not a hopeless place. In fact, they are just the opposite. They seem filled with hope. The hope of the harvest and the strength that community living can bring.

    Being in the hills is an amazing experience. As an mzungu (white person) it is not easy to blend and we do become the village entertainment, but I suppose it’s the least we can do!

    I love this moment, this little kiddo in the oversized t-shirt was so scared of the white people and of our cameras, but once our good friend Wesley from Cooked In Africa Films showed him his picture he was all smiles. I do love film, but God bless digital!

    The hills reminded my why we made this leap and what it is all for…

    These are the people,
    this is the moment,
    here.we.are.

    That’s all for now,
    Kristy

scroll to top
error: