coffee

i love coffee and have loved it since i discovered it in high school.  now, i find myself living in the midst of where some of the best coffee in the world is grown.  how coffee is grown and harvested is very interesting.  like most of the raw materials in Tanzania, the highest quality coffee beans are sold on the global market for processing elsewhere.  

in Moshi there is a coffee cooperative that has been very successful and they have daily auctions during the harvest season when the buyers come to purchase the beans.  the roasting and any further processing is done in the west.  the coffee plantations here get by but are by no means a way to accumulate wealth.  it's almost like an inheritance burden.  

the coffee plants will produce for 100 years if properly cared for so each generation carries on.

one weekend i go with friends on a hike through a plantation and it's beautiful but also easy to see how much work goes into producing a crop.  the plantation manager gives a an overview of the crops which is really complicated and more than i can explain.  like growing vanilla - very labor intensive and volatile in the global marketplace.  


we get to wander the plantation and find a waterfall which is refreshing but too cold for a swim.