Africa Solidarity day in Kiel

The Fall is here. Its not my favourite season for various reasons, but mainly because it brings with it the shorter days. You see i grew up in a country that does not have seasons; it either rains like hell on the mountains of the Aberdares, or the hot tropical African sun sends you hiding underneath the shadowy Mugumo trees.
With now the shorter days, and darkness as early as 4 pm, it sends my mind to tricks that it is super late, so i start making soup and getting to bed earlier :O . The fall is one thing i dont think i will ever come to terms with.
Its nice ofcourse watching the tree leaves change colour on my street and eventually fall, but this brings in a sadness in me because deep down i know its the end of the nice weather.....and the beginning of the main coffee picking season for my people.

the view of my street with all the leaves changing colours and falling off

Well, 2 weeks ago saw us attend and co -organise the Afrika Solidaritätstag in Kiel Schleswig Holstein.
This is an event which is done once every year and brings together Migrants of African descent that live and work in Germany. These are amazing people who work together with their German counterparts in the state of Schleswig Holstein towards Intercultural understanding, Global Learning as well as Cooperative development with their countries of origin.
The theme for this year's event was Fairer Handel als Chance für Entwicklung.
We got to be one of the key note speakers based on our work with the coffee producers in Nyeri Kenya.



We did a presentation of the journey of my village, a presentation of what the coffee producers go through before they are able to produce those cups of our morning coffee that we take for granted.

Explaining much patience is required in coffee production-

With the Fall in Germany, my people in Kenya have the month of October, a month that brings with it the main coffee picking season, where the farmers toil from dawn to dusk...where my grandmother who doesnt even know her age still tends her coffee bushes. Our own close and personal relationship with these coffee producers, gives them a silver of hope, a hope for a sustainable market for their produce with the partnerships that we form in Germany, my the force be with us.

During the African Solidarity day, i show-cased the amazing work of these selfless producers and the process of coffee production and processing in Kenya.

Through Kedovo e.V we work with the coffee producers in Nyeri towards Sustainable coffee production, as well as support various community development projects in Kiganjo, with our hearts leaning heavily on supporting the education requirements for the children of our coffee producers.

The event was amazing, and it was such a fulfilling moment to meet other people who believe that if we work together we can bring the much needed development in Africa, not through Grants but through the facilitation of bringing in knowledge, tools and networks to communities back in Africa so that they can bring out their capacities and capabilities.

In pictures.....

and we danced....

So, as i continue surviving the Fall, my people continue picking coffee......
To the Roasters in Germany, remember with the purchase of our coffee, you give hope to the kids of my village, hope beyond  primary schools, hope to dare to dream and to see the world. As usual lets make it happen.

We are currently offerring coffee from Ndurutu Wet Mill - Rutuma Cooperative Nyeri, 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.

More news from Ndurutu and the projects underway coming up in the week.

The journey continues....

The Kedovo Sustainable coffee farming Project-Ndurutu wet mill

Its been a while......Well a lot has happened and i have been busy transforming my Attic to liveable quarters.The boys decided they needed their own space to build all those trains that i kept stumbling on, and after several hours of debate and voting...they got the Attic. Its a relief for 'my space' downstairs, but that came with a price; i was a Carpenter for close to a month!!!!

Well, back to news from Ndurutu.......
Our sustainable coffee project in partnership with Ndurutu wet mill, entered another phase last month with a group of 10 farmers.

James our volunteer graphicer was busy making sure our farmers had enough protective clothing for the work ahead...

These farmers are undergoing various trainings on both Agronomy and Agri-business.They will later on act as multiplicators of the knowledge to the other farmers in the wet mill. Ndurutu wet mill has currently 527 small scale coffee farmers that produce approx 290,000 kgs of cherry annually. Their coffee is currently available for sale in Germany.

As most of us in the coffee world well know,Kenyan coffee has a distinctive unique quality and it does fetch good prices on the international markets. Unfortunately the kenyan coffee producers are still among the poorest communities in the world.
Our project doesnt dwell on what 'if' or make speculations, we simply want to go on living but with a different hope for our producers. We want our producers as well to understand that Sustainable coffee farming has to be about more than just the current way of doing things.
We want our farmers to understand that, for them to advance economically from coffee production, they have to do more than simply sending coffee in a burlap bag overseas and expecting the buyers to pay an 'arm and a leg' for it. For us to be paid these high prices we also have to add value to our coffee- that is the only way we can have a harmonised partnerships with our buyers in Germany.

To achieve this, Kedovo gang in Kenya is currently busy training the farmers on the following activities, which are at the basic level and yet very crucial in determining the final quality of the end product.

We also got inhouse our dedicated volunteer Mailin who is busy learning in Kenya all the processes of coffee production and processing. Welcome aboard Mailin.

Mailin cleaning coffee in Kenya

And so the gang gets ready with the following:

Agronomy:

• Soil conservation measures such as planting blue grass and digging erosion basins to hold soil run offs.
• Recycling of coffee by-products (Pulp) into the fields to build organic matter content.
• Planting of shade trees and re-afforestation.
• Appropriate land preparation.
• Organic foliar application.
•  Pests and diseases control management.
• Timely production activities eg Pruning, weed control, Desuckering etc.

These activities aims to increase the annual income of small-scale producers through improvements in productivity, quality, and diversity of the coffee. Currently the farmers have as low as 2kg productivity per coffee tree, with our agronomy trainings, we plan to increase productivity to atleast 5kg per coffee tree, and this will be high quality coffee leading to increased income.

 Agri-business:
Its is said that Agribusiness is one of the main generators of employment and income worldwide. I dont dispute. But do coffee producers practise agri business?
Davie of Kedovo Kenya asked one farmer how much he spent last month on costs of production, the farmer had no idea :( Now its in his docket to train our coffee producers what is record keeping, and how to factor the cost of labour in their calculations.
Our project emphasizes traininings in business management. I believe for these farmers to thrive, they must use a business approach in their coffee production.
We want our producers to develop themselves to an extent where they can run self-financed, well-managed business operations which can export directly to roasters worldwide. That is Sustainability.

Davie and Mailin.

The farmers will be trained as well on :

• Sound business practices
• Business management
• Record keeping
• Market information systems
• Accounting
• Business planning
• Savings and credit management. 

This project has been facilitated by our partner Sandtorkai Handel Papenhagen and ofcourse all of you roasters and our dedicated clients who continue buying the coffee from Soni and Nicole.
Many thanks to all of you who have believed in us, just to mention a few; Jonas, Kira, Daniel,Pingo, Thimo,Cornie, Eva, etc

We still have a lot of work ahead of us...lets make it happen.

As usual we still have some stocks of the Ndurutu coffee available at our warehouse in Bremen.

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.

In the meantime, Mailin continues to harvest and wet processes the coffee in Kenya..

And Soni and Kira get ready to travel to Kenya in the next couple of months...to prepare our next shipment.

So long!

Signed Soni

Bringing hope to Ndurutu Primary School

The other day i met someone at the weekend market, someone who boldly and bluntly asked me if  there are schools in 'Africa' and if i attended school there or if i schooled abroad etc etc...the usual strings of questions.
I answered yes there are schools in Africa or rather in the part of 'Africa' that i come from, you see am Kenyan so i can only talk about Kenya. In the end i reffered the lady to this blog so she could learn the work that we do, and show her where I and my team in Kenya went to school....i hope she is reading this.

Ndurutu Primary School- my former school

Anyway, back to our post of the day.
The coffee from Ndurutu Wet mill arrived in Germany and Me and my partner Nicole are busy 'knocking doors' selling this coffee so we can continue with the next phase of our projects.

The gang in Kenya from Kedovo are busy implementing and facilitating the planned sustainable projects from the sale of this coffee.Today they spent the whole morning at Ndurutu Primary school, mentoring and bringing hope to the children of our coffee producers from Ndurutu Wet Mill.

Davie & George of Kedovo Kenya arriving at Ndurutu Primary

Ndurutu Primary is located in Kiganjo, Nyeri county approximately 150 kms from Nairobi on the Nairobi- Nanyuki- Isiolo road.The school has currently 166 pupils, who are all from the coffee farming community.
The school is government owned and underfunded esp in terms of teachers,learning materials, schools buildings among other amenities.The school infrastructure has drastically deteriorated, including classroom blocks, toilets, writting boards etc and as a result teachers are less inclined to stay and invest in the school.

The morale of the children is low, as they do not see a bright future ahead, most of them lack the basic amenities.....and this is where now the Kedovo-Chania Coffee gang comes in.Our work is to bring hope to communities and show them that everything is possible. We connect communities and form sustainable partneships that lead to development.What mainly lies in our hearts especially is that the children of our coffee producers, can have access to education and learn in conducive environment, and give them the hope of when tomorrow comes... we want our coffee producing communities to start rebuilding their lives and head towards the journey of self- reliance.
Today the gang distributed uniforms and writting books to some of the pupils.

  

You see Uniforms are very important in the Kenyan schooling system. Its mandatory for each child to wear school uniform in Kenya's public schools.Attending school without uniform is a punishable offence that can lead even to the pupil being expeled from school.

School uniforms In Kenya is not even an issue that is up for debate, its believed that they enhance a sense of visual equality and decrease distractions from schoolwork when at school, as well as make students easy to identify.

Many parents in the community can still not afford to buy school uniforms, and thats why we have the Kedovo school uniform program, where we donate the uniforms to the children. As we all in Kedovo and Chania Coffee grew up there, we do not need any studies or researches to understand the impact of distributing school uniforms to children in Kenya. 

I myself personally remember at one time when i was in class 5 and my uniform was torn and had this big patch that my mother had sewn overnight with a white thread ( the uniform was green- so you can imagine the contrast :o)....i was so embrassed in school because the other children who maybe had 'better off' parents would make fun of the patchwork, i cried so much that i didnt attend the school the next day, and my mother had to sell our only remaining goat; Chifi to buy me a school uniform.Well i got an uniform but that meant my younger brother had to go for months without the goat milk- he forgave me when he grew up ;)

Many children feel stigmatized by the failure to wear an uniform and they maybe even be reprimanded by the teachers.

So basically we have the experience and we know and believe that distributing uniforms reduces school absenteesim by a big percentage.The effects are actually quite larger for pupils who did not previously own a uniform or had a torn one.

We know very well  that reducing the cost of schooling by providing uniforms among other inputs increases school participation and our plan is to encourage these children so that we can stem up their feelings and overall perfomance.

                                                   

Many people might not understand the reasons for school uniforms in Kenya but Equality is promoted through school uniforms. In a country where there is a wide gap between the rich and the poor there is a dire need to ensure that there is a sense of equality in as many areas as possible. It is especially important for young people to learn that in as much as they come from various backgrounds, be it economic, religious or ethnic, they are equal in their goals and purpose in the academic institutions. School uniforms do this rather effectively in that they cost the roughly the same amount and they are all alike, thus bringing out a sense of equality among the students regardless of where they come from.

We also supported the school with books. Many people might ask why books? Many social- economic factors such as the inability to afford text books and writting books often lead to poor or dismal performance even for bright and determined students meaning that their academic career will end prematurely. The Kedovo project of Education for sustainable development ensures that we provide books and offer support to the children of our coffee producers with the goal of enabling them to perform better in school and in so doing we open up more academic opportunities for them, opportunities that are beyond the primary school levels, opportunities to see the world.....opportunities to dare to dream...

i

The Kedovo gang doing their 'slow motion' distributing books in Ndurutu Primary their former school

In plan is to set up a small Library within the school where the pupils can be borrowing text books and story books through a systematic model.

In the end, the Kedovo team had a long talk with the pupils of Ndurutu Primary School, they gave talks about our past, about us all growing up in the village, about us 'scurring' with open jerricans on the gullies of River Chania, about us and our dreams and where we are headed as a community.....about us and the journey of our village.
The names of the Kedovo team are on the 'wall of fame' at the school, our names hang there to remind the kids that there is hope in the village, and today the kids could see for sure there was hope....
They told the kids the stories of a far away land where our Partners Nicole and Heinz come from, and the kids in a far away village , the village of my birth were so thankful to these two amazing people who have and continue supporting our work.

Davie telling the story about Nicole and where she lives

And they listened and had hope......a hope of a better tomorrow

To my Partner, Sandtorkai Handel Papenhagen...thankyou for giving us a chance to tell the story of a far away village in the slopes of Mt. Kenya, thankyou for giving us a chance to tell Our Story Our Way.....

To the Roasters in Germany, who have been whole heartedly supporting our work, our sincere gratitude, remember our work is not finished, we have classrooms to build, Libraries to set up, more uniforms, books, learning materials to distribute....lets make it happen.
The Ndurutu story is a story worth remembering and repeating....help us tell the story.

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.

The journey continues.....

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.....