Apollinaire has grown coffee for more than four decades but rarely had the chance to taste it. Like many other coffee farming parents in Burundi, Apollinaire has gone to great lengths teaching his children how to grow and care for coffee
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Apollinaire has grown coffee for more than four decades but rarely had the chance to taste it. Like many other coffee farming parents in Burundi, Apollinaire has gone to great lengths teaching his children how to grow and care for coffee
Why Kenya? Why travel there during a global pandemic? Isn’t producing Burundi coffee enough? Reflections from Long Miles’ co-founder on a recent trip to Kenya.
Coffee has a storied history in Burundi. It was introduced to the country in the 1920s under Belgian colonial rule. By the early 1930s, all of the farmers in the country were given coffee seedlings and forced to cultivate them with very little resources, support, or compensation to do so.
The coffee farmers we work with have always been central to who we are, but until 2017 their stories were always filtered and shared by me- an outsider looking in. We began Long Miles thinking we knew what farmers needed, but could we really know if we never experienced life through their eyes?
What is Farmer Payday and why is it a significant event for coffee farmers in Burundi? Why is rain a big challenge for coffee export in Burundi? What processes occur at the dry mill?
FROM THE FARM, FIELD AND LAB From the Farm collected and translated by Joy Mavugo in conjunction with Robyn-Leigh van Laren from the Long Miles Story team. On Thursday, 18 June 2020 the newly elected president Evariste NDAYISHIMIYE was sworn into office, two months before the official inauguration ceremony was planned and a week before …