I love it under the coffee trees. Don’t you? We’re off to the coffee hills again tomorrow. I’ll be photographing more of the harvest process and Coffee Guy will be talking with farmers and making sure the coffee cherries are being processed correctly .
I can’t wait. Being among the coffee trees re-connects me with the very reason we made such a dramatic move in the first place. My boys run free in their gum boots in the middle of Africa and my heart swells a bah-zillion times.
Love,
me
It’s harvest time here in Burundi and we decided to take the entire family into Burundi’s beautiful coffee hills to see it… and the film crew tagged along too. I don’t know if you will remember, but last year we didn’t see the harvest because we couldn’t get ourselves moved over here in time. It is a beautiful thing to see those coffee cherries bright red on the trees. The harvest will last for almost 90 days this season, so I am sure you will be sick and tired of hearing about it by the time we are through!
Meanwhile… the amazing cinematographer Sunel filming the picking process. Me with my sassy pants on, caught by Producer Wesley while drying polaroid negatives between the coffee trees. Coffee Guy explaining the picking process for the cameras, while surrounded by kids (some of them his own, most of them not).
Happy harvest!
Love,
me
I hate to admit it…
(because it might be just a little bit cheesy)
but I saw myself in these pitiful jute coffee sacks.
What is it
about life here…
that keeps me so totally raw
all
of
the
time?
As if THAT NEEDLE is passing through
me
EVERY
DAY.
Do you know what the French word for DAY is?
journee
I can’t help but see the symbolism.
Every
DAY
is
A
JOURNEY.
(I am SHOUTING that, right NOW)
Throughout this
JOURNEY
HERE in THIS PLACE
I have felt so totally out of control.
As if I was loosing my mind, my soul, my everything.
Well, you guys know…
you’ve had to
But the clouds are clearing.
The holes seem to be mending.
SOMEONE
is
piecing us all
back together.
One
stich
at
a
time.
A new season is
HERE…
and
the coffee harvest
is only a few weeks away.
love,
me
Coffee bag mending for the 2012 season
Gacokwe Washing Station, Burundi
ISO 400, 1/1600 sec, f/1.6 (if you care about that stuff)
Today I’m taking a step back. Looking at the last few months in pictures. I am blown away with gratitude. I am so grateful. Grateful for the journey we are on. Grateful that we live here even though IT’S TOUGH sometimes. Grateful for the people in our lives (the ones we see every day and the ones we don’t).
Thanks for sticking with us.
I sure do… to help this community. I’m not going to lie. There have been lots of days (usually the “I’m-not-writing-on-that-darn-blog” days) that I don’t understand or know my purpose here. I know who I am, but not always what I am doing here. I am a wife. A mother. A photographer. A creative. A wanna-be chef. A wanna-be gardener. A wanna-be runner….. we better stop now. My wanna-be list is as long as my arm. BUT it is ultimately Coffee Guy’s purpose that brought us here. Yes, I love coffee. No, it’s not my job to export containers of it or to help farmers… but I care about it anyways. Deeply.
I need to go to the coffee hills. To bring the kids with. To connect with the reason why I left everything I did to come here. To see the women, to know we are helping, to breathe the air they breathe, to see the communities they live in. To remember WHY I gave up my house and my dog and my friends…. for a new purpose. Those are THE BEST DAYS of this journey. I love our mid-week jaunts to the hills. It’s a time for us to pull the kid out of school, drive through the banana trees and connect. Connect. Connect. With our purpose.
But enough about me… really. Seriously. There are people right outside my door with no clothes on and I’m whining about my purpose. Uff duh… so far to go girl, so far to go.
Last week, with the film crew and the nanny all packed into the car…we headed to a new community. Farmers in a new part of Burundi. We drove along the lake and then up and up and up into new hills.
Being filmed along the way.
The following few pics shot out the car windows. Aka: totally incredible images. Just kidding. Try bumpy, blurry ones.
Goat meat kabobs anyone? The goat is hanging right there so you can pick your cut of meat. That yellow container probably has banana beer in it. Good combo, banana beer and goat. Not much left, better hurry on down!
Move it cows, we’re comin’ through!
Arriving at this amazing community.
The farmers waiting for us.
They have built this washing station with their own money. Here in Burundi, that’s rare. most exist because of government grants or foreign aid or foreign investment. This one exists because of initiative. Pure and Simple. We were so impressed by this amazing community. They need a $45,000 USD loan to complete their washing station. Feel like investing? Email us! We can give you a breakdown of where every cent would go.
If you are a coffee shop and invest, they would give you first option on all the coffee they produce and you can garantee we would help oversee the processes as much as possible for as long as we are here.
They stopped school and brought the students to us so that we could tell them about the importance of education and coffee farming for their community.
Ever wondered what it looks like to produce a TV show in the coffee hills. Well, it looks like this! Hi Wesley!
Myles does some cool drawings while the community meets with us about their project.
Long Miles Coffee Project from Cooked in Africa on Vimeo.
Yeah, I know. I feel like we have some explaining to do. For the last six months, on and off, a film crew has been following us around documenting our journey into Burundi. The show is mostly about our lives, which scares me silly, and coffee. I hate being in front of the camera. Hate. Really, I am using that word. So, this has been a learning experience for me. I am not saying that I love it now, but I sure do love the people behind the scenes. They have come along for the ride and are now part of our family… even though they still bug the crap out of me with their cameras. I didn’t want to tell you. It’s true. I thought you might think we’re vain, or silly or something… anyway, I’m sharing it now. That’s the first step for us in-front-of-camera-haters.
These guys clearly don’t have my in-front-of-camera phobia. Here’s Sunel, we call her Auntie Sunel around here, getting a good shot. Oh, and by the way, they shoot everything on the Canon 7D, which just happens to be the camera I shoot with too. Confession: before I met these guys I had used the video function on my camera one time.
Here’s Coffee Guy doing his thing again… talkin’ about coffee some more.
All while holding a baby and runnin’ around in the hills.
Smelling the beans, always a good thing. I am aware that my children seldom have all their clothes on. I don’t really plan on changing that. Keeping us all in clothes is too much effort… at least I manage to get myself dressed!
Here’s Uncle Wesley, our creative director, slogging the gear through the hills with Myles.
World class sound man, right here.
Hangin’ with the crew, workin’ on some great ideas.
Wesley imparting age old Mac wisdom to my five year old…
aaaand to my 1 year old. Neo loves Auntie Sunel… and her Macbook.
So that’s what we’re up to folks. What do you think about all that? We’d love to know…
Luv,
Kristy
