The Coffee from Ndurutu Wet Mill

Its been a while, after my trip to Neustadt on the Baltic Sea, i literally 'packed' the 'boys' in the car and headed to the Mountains of Salzburg in Austria......it was a great 7 days! i didnt get to ride  The Untersberg cable-car but i had an amazing time and ofcourse visited the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart...
Anyway back to our Journey....
Before i left for the mountains, our much awaited container carrying the coffee from Ndurutu Wet Mill; Rutuma Cooperative arrived at the port of Bremen. 

I couldnt make it to Bremen, but my Partner - the one person who gave my village the hope of development through sustainable coffee production was there to receive the coffee.

Nicole Boedtger receiving the coffee from Ndurutu Wet mill in Bremen

offloading the Ndurutu coffee in Bremen-Germany

I will highlight a bit of information about Ndurutu  Mill and how much this means to me.
When i was growing up we used to deliver our coffee at the Marua cooperative which is appx. 5km from the village of Ndurutu. All the farmers from the villages of Ndurutu, Kahiga, Kirichu, Kanuna,Ndathiini, Kiganjo to mention but a few would join in clusters and have a 'collection point' where the tractor from Marua made its slow than ever journeys collecting the produce to be wet processed at the mill in Marua. Our collection point was at the mainroad on the turn to Ndurutu village on the Kiganjo- Nanyuki road. This meant endless hours and ques of us children waiting at these collection points for our produce to be weighed and documented...in this time our parents would be running other chores.
I remember how my childhood friends and 'gang members ' like John Murage, Joyce Wanjiru, Lawrence Mwangi etc would devise 'mean' ways and be ahead of the que....and then my amazing brother Davie discovered that he could 'literally camp' at the collection centre, using and empty sack on the que he would secure a place for me and my sister as we struggled with heavy loads of the coffee sacks on our back, terkking 1 1/2 kms from our Hilly farm, under the hot African sun....

women farmers delivering coffee

The coffee from Ndurutu wet mill means a lot to all of us at Chania Coffee and Kedovo e.V because this mill was put up by the then Marua Farmers Cooperative Society in 1996.We were all old enough to help with digging the trenches, passing on the heavy stones...etc
Our parents constructed the mill because the whole village was tired of trekking 5 kms with coffee sacks on our backs, in the hot January weather, in the chilly foggy July weather, in the rainy muddy Sept weather...All the villages came in numbers and the mill was constructed ...for days and nights. Our parents still to date deliver their coffee to this mill...its the 'jewel' of the village.
My mother now doesnt walk 5kms with the coffee on her back, she walks 500 metres to the mill!! my brother says she even leaves onions frying on the pan, delivers her coffee and shes back in the kitchen before the onions brown ;)  
With the purchase of this coffee, my partner Sandtorkai Handel Papenhagen has supported our development work. The next couple of months the team in KEDOVO-Kenya will be so busy intiating and facilitating our various projects:

Ndurutu Wet Mill

 This time we will support the education requirements for the children of Ndurutu Primary School, the team will identify the most pressing issues and we will fully support those children and empower them with the gift of Education in conducive environments- our work will range from purchase of uniforms, support with school fees, support with text books, purchase of new desks, renovations of blackboards and classrooms etc

classroom ndurutu primary school.

We will work with the Neema Caregivers, a group of 10 dedicacted women who labour beyond odds to cater for their families and still have time and energy to take care of the Neema Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre; the centre that we support to ensure those formers street kids have a roof, an education and a future...
Kedovo kenya will launch, train,facilitate & monitor Income Generating Projects for these women- how they can set up small businesses that can generate income and lead to self reliance...

Soni with the Neema Women group

We will expand our project of Sustainable coffee farming and incoporate 10 more farmers to the intial pilot project. These farmers will undergo intensive trainings on Agronomy as well as Agribusiness- to us coffee production should give the farmers a decent income.We can have all the certifications there is in the world of coffee, but they will be irrelevant to our producers if they cannot feed their families....

We will dig up the Kedovo farm in Chaka and realise our training project of Enähr das Dorf- Feed the village.The team in Kenya will train the community on best sustainable farming practises that are not dependent on climate and weather patterns.

  

To my dear Roasters in Germany, our partners in this journey, all the people who continue believing in our journey,we have a lot of work ahead of us... lets make it happen.

We are currently offerring the Ndurutu coffee, late harvest 2013/ 2014 F.O.T Bremen- transport to other destination within Germany arrangable at a cost. 

Please contact Nicole Boedtger or Soni Schneidewind for samples, price quoatations and contracting.

To my partner Sandtorkai Handel Papenhagen, thankyou for giving my farmers a chance to thrive, for giving their children a chance to better education, thankyou for giving me and my people a chance to tell our story....

Our journey continues....

signed Soni

Partnerships and Cooperation Development

5 years ago if my friend Mercy Mutunga and former collegue had told me that i would be standing infront of young high school students discussing Cooperation & Sustainable Development in a far off land, i would have brushed it off and told her to get a life or simply order another glass of martini..... anyway i will write about Mercy one day and our lives back then ;)
So....5 years later instead of sitting in the Nairobi traffic for hours, fighting the undisciplined Matatu drivers under the scorching African sun, without a hope when the traffic jam was gonna end, i stood infront of a class in a far away land in a small town by the Baltic See, the town of Neustadt in Schleswig Holstein Germany.

The presentation for today was facilitated by someone i hardly knew, someone who just stumbled on my Website and believed in my work; Herr Marcel Krolow- the Geography teacher at the Küstengymnasium Neustadt.

Marcel the teacher ;)

Today i presented the work of Kedovo e.V in regards to Sustainable Development for the community of the Aberdare Mountains, the land of my people. What exactly entails a community that is practising SD? is Sustainable Development really achievable or is it just a word that just gets thrown around? Can rural communities in a far off village attain self reliance?
When i founded Kedovo e.V (Kenya Dorf Volunteers) this was based on a strong conviction that if my people were facilitated with ideas and hope, they would bring out their capabilities and capacities.The time had come to break the cycle of poverty, disease and drought among the cofee producing community in Nyeri, and this could only be achieved through knowledge transfers and Partnerships that would open up the world for them...and only through this, could they achieve 'Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe as one of the students in the presentation summarized it today......that is the only way that my people can be Self-reliant.

It hasnt been easy, but I havent lost that belief.......i havent lost the hope.
Through the Kedovo's Elimu's Project we showcase a different type of Kenya, a Kenya that is not raged with poverty, disease and war....but a real Kenya where my farmers still toil in their coffee fields daily, with a hope of 'when tomorrow comes' , where my mother still goes to the coffee fields with her basket in the July fog and rain, where my neighbour despite being aged 70 years still prunes his coffee in readiness for a new harvest... where we know and now believe that Sustainable Development through coffee farming is achievable, where we now plant coffee bushes again in the hope of a better market tomorrow, where through our project we bring in the aspect of Globales lernen, Nachhaltige Entwicklung und Entwicklungzusammenarbeit.
And yes sustainable development is achievable for the developing world, they might have a long way to go but all they need is facilitation and guidance....and we can open up up the world for them by forming honest Partnerships from both sides..........
Today i rest knowing that i have brought the journey of my village further, i hope that i left a mark in Neustadt where they have now a different understanding on how sustainable development can be achieved, i rest knowing that its not easy but cooperation development is important, i rest knowing that some community today did first see for the first time how a coffee bush looks like, i rest knowing that there is hope....

And i listened and noted down how we can work together with the people who believe in what am doing...

And i let them learn how Partnerships can work.....

And we discussed.....

And then we did what we do best......roasting coffee

Our Journey continues..........

Signed Soni.

Kaltenkirchen becomes a Fairtrade Town

The Fairtrade Towns campaign movement started in the UK in the year 2001.
A Fairtrade Town is any community in which people and organisations use their everyday choices to increase sales of Fairtrade products and bring about positive change for farmers and workers in developing countries.

The town of Kaltenkirchen started this campaign in the year 2012 and we joined the Intiative group in Oct 2013.
Becoming a Fairtrade Town is a shared achievement and an opportunity for local government, schools, businesses, community organisations and activists to work together.

Fairtrade Intiative group-Kaltenkirchen

To become a Fairtrade Town, a community needs to meet certain goals and criterias that are set and monitored at national levels. The town of Kaltenkirchen has met all the criteria required and tomorrow my new home officially becomes a Fairtrade Town.
Ofcourse in our situation we took the step of Fairtrade further by working directly with the coffee producers in Nyeri and importing their coffee directly, intiating & facilitating rural development projects and inturn making sure money is put back to these improvished coffee producing communities...

The community of Kaltenkirchen has its own 'community coffee' ; Kaki Kahawa which is produced by the community of Karindundu -Barichu Cooperative Nyeri Kenya.The coffee is available at the Ein Welt Laden of the VHS Kaltenkirchen, Chania Coffee Online shop as well as at our coffee stand every saturday at the Kaltenkirchener Wochenmarkt. The coffee is available both as whole beans and ground coffee.

And so we get ready.......tomorrow we showcase the work and efforts of Kedovo e.V towards sustainable development for the community of a remote village somewhere near the Aberdare mountains; the village of my birth. 

 And so.....to those who can make it tomorrow, the event beginns at 9:30- 14:00 we will be outside the Rathaus , visit the Fairen Markt and get to buy amazing stuff from all over the world, the Ein Welt Laden of the VHS will present various products ranging from handmade kiondos ( sisal baskets) from a women group in Machakos Kenya, to Cocoa produced in Munyenge in Cameroon, Tee produced by the great people of Kanchanjunga in Nepal...Kaki Kahawa (Coffee) produced by the community of Karindundu Nyeri Kenya etc....

From 14:00-15:00 will be the handing over of the Fairtrade Town Certificate to the Mayor of Kaltenkirchen by Transfair of Bonn and afterwards there will be an interaction and networking in ambiante atmosphere as you get to savour our Fairtrade Buffet that will take you from the kitchens of Kenya, through Ghana , India , before settling with the delicious Pao de Queijo from Brazil! 

See you there.....

We all have dreams....

I grew up at a time when Kenya was a one party state....i grew up at a time when the then Kenyan government would provide each and every pupil in school a packet of milk every Tuesday and Thursday for free!!! ;)- so you can imagine how full the classes were on those two particular days... i grew up at a time when the highest export and foreign exchange earner for Kenya was COFFEE.

the view of the sunset from my village-where our dreams are nurtured

And then came what is now popularly known as ''the coffee crisis'' in the early 1990's and our world collapsed....and the Exodus began :(
You see, we were all in school, and our parents could somehow still survive to keep us there....and yes there was the government milk! 
We all had dreams, we wanted to become doctors, engineers, pilots or simply visit Disney World :D....
But after the crisis, many of my classmates had to quit school, their parents could no longer afford the compulsorly school fees in Kenya back then, and the Milk truck disappeared so fast it was as if it had never existed.....
My community depended largely on coffee as a means of income, including food purchase

and this crisis led to indebtedness and many were forced to abandon their farms or switch to alternative crops. The journey to more hardship and increased poverty began....

I finished high school and left when i was 17...i left like many of my mates to go and ''see the world'',some of us pursued our dreams..and the rest who were not lucky enough remained in the village to continue with the same cycle of living on less than 1 US$ a day... 

15 years later visiting my old primary school

15 years later, i came back to the village of my birth, this time not to visit......i had seen enough of the world i had wanted to go and see when i was a teenager.....this time i came back to make sure that the children from my village would again have dreams, they would not only have dreams but they were gonna live those dreams....i couldn't get the milk truck again for them but i was gonna make sure they remained in schools where they had a chance to acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values necessary to shape a sustainable future...

A quote from the late Mandela is what inspired me ''Education is the most powerful weapon that you can use to change the world''-Nelson Mandela

And this is the weapon me and the crew of both Kedovo Kenya and Germany wanna use to change the future of my village.

Our pickup arriving at Karindundu primary loaded with new school desks & lockers

Yesterday our team from the Kedovo Kenya Chapter spent the day at Karindundu Primary School in Karatina where they donated school desks and lockers as in the framework of our project ''Education for sustainable development'' for the children of our coffee producers....this great project has been facilitated by Sandtorkai Handel Papenhagen of Germany and Chania Coffee of Germany.

Zackie of Kedovo doing what he does best- Coordinating

new desks & lockers for Karindundu primary school

Karindundu Factory is one of the wet mills from Barichu Cooperative- the great farmers that produce our coffee that is currently available for sale in Germany. Their children attend Karindundu Primary school which is government owned and is currently underfunded.

George from Kedovo counter checking that all is in order ;)

 The Kedovo Education for sustainable development project, is close  to the hearts of all of us at both Kedovo Kenya and Germany. You see...we all are children of the coffee producers from Nyeri, we know and have lived the hardships of not knowing if tomorrow you will remain in class, we have all had dreams that were either shattered or we lived them..we now want to confront the 'silent emergency' of the coffee world head on before it sends our village back to chronic hunger that will ran deeply for generations to come, we want to confront it before it pulls the children of our village from the schools and back to the coffee fields.....

 

Davie the Program Director-Kedovo Kenya handing over the desks to the Management of Karindundu

How does the concept work? In the year Dec 2012 we came together and formed a partnership with some of the coffee producers in Nyeri. They would give coffee cultivation one 'last shot'- my team in Kenya would train them on sustainable coffee farming that is within the ecological, economical and social limits, that respected the crops and the farmers. We would produce economically & ecologically sustainable coffee that would be sort after by the western world...and me and the gang in Germany would look for market for the produce. In turn, we would also intiate, facilitate & support Rural developmental projects in the community from some of the earnings of the produce ..and they inturn would send their children to school, and I and the gang would keep those children in school and mobilise resources and especially through the coffee sales and provide the school requirements for the children of our coffee producers; May the force be with us.....

desks before

lockers before

 

thank you Familie Papenhagen

On behalf of of the Kedovo team, the pupils of Karindundu Primary school in Karatina Kenya, the Parents Teachers Association, The Board of Governors from the school, The Management of Barichu Cooperative Society...we convey our sincere thanks to Nicole Boedtger & Heinz Papenhagen of Sandtorkai Handel Papenhagen and all the Roasters in Germany for supporting our work and  for making it happen....

The kedovo team-kenya, BOG & PTA members, Headteacher Karindundu & Sec.Mngr Barichu Coop

The journey continues.....

The Coffee Farmers

Today's blog is about the coffee farmers. I will not talk about their working conditions, i will not talk about their poverty, their plight, the problems facing them, i will not talk about their exploitation or why they striked, i will simply talk about my people; because that is what they are.

A few days ago, someone sent me an email with simply one line ''Warum machen Sie sowas?'' (why are you doing this?). To someone like me who grew up in an English speaking country, this might sound outright rude. I kept thinking for days, had i misunderstood his question? or was it just the german bluntness? ;) and he had no ill motives behind his one lined question?
To answer his question i decided to write this article, less i misunderstood / misjudged his question and not only for him but for all the ''coffee people'' out there.

First, it’s important to realize that coffee is a globally traded commodity just like oil. Actually, coffee is the second-most traded commodity with oil being the first. However, for many of the world’s 25 million coffee farmers, coffee is a labour intensive crop that frequently yields very little financial return. 
To fully understand how the pricing of coffee works, one needs to know the Coffee Price Economics.What variables drive up and down the coffee prices?- this is where my Macroeconomics text book written by Japheth Osotsi Awiti from the School of Economics at the UON comes in handy! Anyway today is not the day for coffee economics lessons.- for that class i would need you guys packed and ready with your big mugs of caffein-laden concotions.
But because i understand these variables, and some of them are speculations or 'unexpected factors' (this is where the Key to everything lies), thats why i do what i do.....

Back to my people; Anyone who is my age or plus or minus 10, and comes from a coffee growing community grew up picking coffee. It was all we did, if we wasnt busy slidding on the muddy gullies of River Chania, or planning our next excursion to the nieghbour's Quava and Mango farms.
We picked the cherries come rain or sunshine! we qued for endless hours at the delivery stations or at the mills, to have our black gold weighed and graded after hours of back-aching hand sorting process. But we waited and endured because we knew that the coffee despite all the struggles we had, somehow paid for our school fees ( even if it meant being sent home for half of the term), it put meals on our tables- even if it was the traditional ration of 96% dry maize and 4 % beans with the Muhika leaves that grew wildly and our mothers picked on the coffee fields-at the same time picking coffee.

And then, we grew up...and most of us left for the big City, armed with hope and determination to change the poverty situation among our families back in the village, and we left our parents and the rest of the siblings picking coffee......

So many things have changed since me and my agemates grew up ...the Republic of Kenya got a new constitution, and powers were devolved to county levels which saw a lot of rapid and in some cases misguided changes in the coffee sector, but what happened to the coffee farmers?...

my father planting new coffee seedlings in march 2013

Many of them grew old and could not continue tending their coffee farms, many of them felled down their coffee trees and simply continued with subsistence farming of maize and beans, many of their children dropped from school for lack of school fees, and me and my agemates who were lucky enough to leave the villages left and some of us swore never to step our feet back to those god forsaken coffee fields! and those who remained had no hope of ever coming out....and some of them held on hope that one day all will be fine, they continued toiling on the coffee fields from dawn to dusk... .thats is what happened to the coffee farmers and their families.

And you ask why i do what i do? i do it because i know only too well the challenges faced by these communities, i do it because we are not a charity organisation walking around in Europe with photos of poor african children with mucus running down their noses to beg for your hard earned money!, i do it because i believe the economic sustainability of the coffee producers begins when they are given the business tools and knowledge resources to make a livable income, i do it because with this journey i will secure the future of my village for generations to come.......

And to the Importers and Roasters who somehow found it in their hearts to boycott buying the coffee of my people this season simply because it was not going through their favourite Exporter, i want you to remember my coffee farmers, i want you to simply forget the politics involved ..i want you to have those farmers in mind when you make your decisions...let those farmers THRIVE.......

Henstedt Ulzburg Project Coffee is now in Real

Having spent the whole day with the pupils from Hartenhoolm Primary School ( thats another blog altogether) i headed to the Real Supermarket in Henstedt -Uzburg where one of our project coffees had just been listed. I needed to remind the community of this small town in the north of Germany that our coffees were / are not just coffees...our coffees have a story to tell and we can trace our coffees back to the small village farms back in the country of my birth, where it was produced....to us coffee is the future of my people. We know the names of our coffee producers, we know how many children each of them have, we get to know when their homes ''smell onions'' (insert a big loud laugh) as my brother Zackie calls it.....you see, all of them are my family.I played with their kids on the gullies near the Chania River....we qued together at night at the coffee milling stations to deliver our produce..our parents still toil the land together....

The Henstedt-Ulzburg coffee is one of the Project Coffees that we have available in the German market.We create partnerships between our coffee producing communities in Nyeri Kenya and the coffee consuming communities in Germany.We believe in TRADE and not AID for the development of Africa....thats is the only way my people can learn, thrive and grow towards self-reliance.
When we opened our doors a year ago, we believed in Partnerships and Transparency...Our story is real, share our story..

And of course my Partner, whom me and my people will always be grateful to, the one person whom and his daughter are now part of our Kedovo ; Chania family was there to share the moment and spend the afternoon with me, Mr Heinz Papenhagen of Sandtorkai HandelPapenhagen.I still remember the day we met....its the day the wheels of change turned for the coffee growing communities of the Mt Kenya and Aberdare mountains.....i will give you the story about that day one day..( it was one of those ''bad hair days'' and bad weather days in the town of cold churches ;)

with Partner Heinz Papenhagen

 This ''super lecker kaffee '' as my German friend Stefan calls it, is roasted by our Connie of the De Koffieman Roastery in Lilienthal.Its available as Ground coffee and Crema whole beans. The coffee is available on sale at the Henstedt Ulzburg Real Supermarket, Edeka Markt in HU, The Shell Petrol station in Henstedt-Rhein and at the Rahmer Bookshop on the main steet in Henstedt-Ulzburg.

With these steps, we know now and my community now believes everything is possible....

Dispatch from Wilstedt

So today i headed to Wilstedt in the wee hours of the morning after 2 strong cups of Chania Coffee. 

Wilstedt is a municipality in the district of Rotenburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany.

I was to spend the day with two of the people who whole heartedly support our work ; Nicole Boedtger of Sandtorkai Handel Papenhagen and Cornelia (Connie) Dotschat of De Koffiemann Roastery.

These two amazing women understand that i do not just sell coffee but that my mission and vision is to make sure that my coffee producing community take control of their lives through a sustainable model that fuels the money back to these communities and stimulate growth out of poverty.

Both of them understand that we do not need to conduct various ''researches'' or whatever in the coffee sector- we simply want to do an alternative form of trade that has the power to revolutionize the economy and income of these communities as well as illustrate that  our partnership can work together to provide a tangible difference in many farmers lives... 

''Women Power''

We spent the day at '' Die Olivenöl-Abholage 2014 Messe'' doing what we know best- Selling cofffee.

There is no better day or gift than spending it with somoene who understands my community's efforts behind every bean of coffee that we import.

And we sold...knowing that every packet we sold, every cent we made was/ is a tangible ''investment'' in a far off remote village nestled on the slopes of Mt Kenya and The Aberdares...the village of my people, the village where i was born.

I continue with my journey, a journey that will secure the future of my village for generations to come.

For all our Kenyan coffee lovers, you can buy this great coffee roasted by Connie either by dropping at her Roastery in Lilienthal or by ordering online at her E-shop De Koffieman- hashtag Kenya.

Tomorrow, we get ready to close the deal on the shipping our second container this year...there is more than hope.

Signed Soni.