Coffee Farm Visit

October 12, 2025

November 2025. - Essay

I leave on foot up the mountain behind my house at 6:45 (AM). The slippery trail of a road is deeply rutted from the heavy rains we’ve been experiencing this month. Children, groups of women, and men pass me.

I have an appointment with Christoper, chairman of the cooperative that I am working at, for a coffee farm tour. I have a vague idea of where his house is, I continue walking for 45 minutes. Local farmers assure me that I am heading the right way then suddenly the trail stops at a tidy looking farmhouse. A Ugandan farm wife waves and calls to her husband to come out, the young children stare at me from a distance. I might be the first American to climb this trail!

Their names are Joseph and Lona, and they graciously spend an hour with me answering my questions about their lifestyle. After a tour of their garden plot and their livestock shelters, Joseph shows me where his family gets their water, a 20 minute walk through small coffee tree farms. This public well is adjacent to Joseph and Lona’s church. There is a new primary school adjacent to the church that they need funding to establish. The school is a simple mud and wattle construction. Each small schoolroom has benches and a chalkboard. They educate over 100 children ranging from nursery school through primary school.

As we talk about the school’s potential, my work supervisor rings. John is surprised that I walked so far on my own. I hang up and tell Joseph that John is expecting me to walk back to Christopher’s farm. Joseph and I climb the path back to his house and we sit with his wife under their coffee trees. I pull a flask of hot rooibos tea from my bag. We sip the hot beverage together, smiling and appreciating the morning. Christopher and John can wait.

Details:

Joseph is one of the few farmers who tends to a kitchen garden. He grows beans, tomatoes, squash, and greens for his family’s consumption. The garden is fenced with barbed wire to keep the free range poultry and animals out.
Joseph has multiple plots of land scattered across the parish on which he maintains coffee farms.
Joseph and Lona send their older children to boarding school in Mbale. Their commitment to their children’s education is commendable and rather unique. Many children in the Buweswa parish have not been attending school this year because the coffee harvest was devastatingly low.

A student of Lumasaaba

October 12, 2025

November 2024

I see Sara climbing the steps, she deftly kicks off her slides at the door and enters my cold, slightly damp front room and we begin our lesson.

I start reviewing terminology introduced last lesson. Sarah very firmly corrects my pronunciation. She’s an experienced secondary school teacher and, as a mother of six, her youngest is the last one home. She has the patience to take me on. I am her new Lumasaaba student.

Our two-hour lesson reaches an end. I realize Sarah will be an ally within the community. She has already checked with the various vendors to see which items I prefer and how much I pay for them. “Sarah,” I ask, do you grow coffee”? “Yes,” she replies. “Our coffee farms are up there,” she points at the mountain behind my house. “Do you sell your coffee direct or through a cooperative?” “We don’t get much for it, we’ve been waiting for you to get here,” she replies.

Visit the Coffee Farmers

October 12, 2025

Late 2024

Rainy Season …. still

“We're going to climb today to visit another savings group, remember?” Yes, I remember, visiting farmers in the field is the best part of the week for me. The clouds look thick this morning, so I am anxious to start moving. He must have noticed my eyes glancing towards the door, “We can’t get there before 11 AM, because the farmers are in the fields all morning,” says John. Yes, I remember this too, but all the same, once the daily rains start, the mountain roads are slick trenches of mud. “Good, you wore your good boots today, you will move very well,” John says appreciatively.

John is the Manager of the Buweswa Growers Cooperative Society, located in Mufufu village. We have been working closely together since I arrived at the site a little over a fortnight ago. The BGCS property is at the center point of the village, and my little colonial-era cinder block house is right on top of its hill. I can see mountainous coffee farms covered in mist from my front porch.

This will be the ninth savings group that I have visited. Our window of opportunity is narrow because the rains begin at 1 PM, or earlier. We begin trudging up the muddy road, still sticky from last night’s showers. Boda Bodas come from both directions, hauling supplies going up, and people coming down. Villagers heading to the main road several kilometers down the mountain. We reach the tiny village at the top of the mountain behind my house, about a 45-minute hike, and we keep climbing. I haven’t had a chance to really explore these high-altitude villages because of the rainy season, but this morning the clouds parted, and we feel the full force of the equatorial sun on our faces. Small holder farmer families have built their homesteads close to the mountain road; they tend to their various plots spaced throughout the district. We stop to greet everyone; they are all curious to hear a foreigner greet them in Lumasaaba.

High-altitude Arabica coffee source

After another 45 minutes of hiking, we reach the savings group who have gathered in a church building on top of an adjoining mountain. The church is missing a wall and is an open shelter at this point. Our group of farmers are all very much at home, calmly looking over the coffee farms and mountain vistas, comfortable in the cool mist. “Let the meeting commence.”

October 2024 Diary Entries

October 12, 2025

Diary - October 2024

First night: Sunday
Second night: Six Kids arrived to help with segiri. They took my oranges, all of them.
Third day: Two Kids arrived Tues morning, I gave the 2 of them milk since I bought too much. More kids arrived PM, I gave them bits of meat.
Fourth night: Kids arrived Wed. evening

24, October

Visit local officials with Counterpart and Supervisor

District Residence Authority asked me if I knew about the homosexual law in Uganda.

Staring back at me, he said the best way to learn the language is to sleep with the language. I feigned shock and stated I would not be sleeping with the language. I would learn from children. Which is really impossible, they speak incredibly fast, and I haven’t the foggiest of what the children are saying.

Diary

Food is cheap, what of it there is. My local choices are greens, mini bitter green eggplants, cabbage, onion, eggs, tomatoes, avocado, banana, goat/beef meat. The market at Bududa had ginger root, different kinds of greens, carrots, white sweet potatoes.

I gave away slices of avocado last night. That is what I’ll have to do. I can’t eat all of the food fast enough.

Kids arrived; John chased them away. I told John to stop, then I took a brief walk, but the roads are greased in wet red clay, so I went home. Some kids came back. I gave them slices of avocado and did calisthenics (Marc Lauren app). The kids were quite entertained and said I was strong.

Oct 30

So many malnourished children and women and maybe men

There are twins down the road, and one has grey hair. Today, a baby had terrible skin and the mother’s breast was withered. She could not be producing enough for the baby. Stunted children, one boy was so despondent his eyes were sunken into his skull. He stood watching me at the side of the road.

A bit of Ugandan history

1952-1962 Sir Andrew Cohen was governor of Uganda. He and Mr. R Dreschfield’s committee decided that the co-operative movement deserved to be independent of government control. He eliminated discriminatory price policies and offered private African access to coffee processing. Coffee cooperative history is not a simple story.