| Wooden Bike Coffee |
Rwanda is a tiny African country surrounded by volcanoes, gorilla
habitats and hills. The bicycle, an important economic tool in Rwanda,
remains out of reach for most Rwandans as only 1 out of 40 can afford
one. This has led to incredible ingenuity; walk along any Rwandan road
and you will find bikes created out of wood. These wooden bikes are
used to move all types of heavy loads like potatoes, beans, lumber and
coffee cherries. Imagine what it takes to push a 50 pound wooden bike
with a load of 300 pounds of coffee cherries 5 to 10 kilometers to the
washing station. It takes a determination born out of suffering.
Project RwandaProject Rwanda, as a non-profit organization, is able to present a unique opportunity to coffee connoisseurs to help support Rwandan cooperative farmers by purchasing Wooden Bike Coffee from Rwanda. By providing market support for their coffee you will help reconstruct a country through strengthening economic stability and success, and this will serve as a model with the potential to impact farmers worldwide.Humanitarian efforts arose from the efforts of concerned people to aid Rwanda’s recovery from a countrywide genocide in 1994. This horrifying event killed nearly a million people and destroyed the economy, including the coffee export business, Rwanda’s largest export crop. Over the past several years, these humanitarian efforts have helped Rwandan farmers with the construction of centralized washing stations and cupping facilities which have enabled them to produce coffees that have earned a remarkable reputation for quality in a short amount of time. However, one of the last great challenges facing the farmers is transporting the cherries from their farms to the central washing stations before fermentation degrades the crop. The Coffee BikeCreating a bicycle solution to this problem has been one focus of Project Rwanda. The “Coffee Bike” was designed with distribution assistance through Project Rwanda and was engineered specifically for transporting heavy loads of coffee. The bicycle is the perfect tool for this transport because of its lower maintenance technology and it allows growers to manage their own transport infrastructure without overly large investments. The expense to own, maintain and fuel a truck is not an economically viable option. Besides breaking down often, trucks have difficulty dealing with the dirt roads, especially when muddy. Because the quality of the crop is directly related to the time it takes to transport the cherry to the mill, it is a great advantage for the farmers to own their own transportation.The QualityIn 2001, with assistance from international aid organizations, Rwandan farmers began investing in specialty coffee for the first time. In just a few years, they have transformed their production and gained the world’s attention. Rwandan coffee now ranks among the world’s finest and most distinctive specialty coffees. Coffee farming in Rwanda is once again a sustainable industry.Rwanda has a comparative advantage over most coffee origins due to its superb growing conditions for quality coffees including high tropical, volcanic soil, and its cooperatives of small-scale family farms. Farmers can give maximum husbandry skills to the small garden-like coffee plots where the rare yet prestigious heirloom ‘bourbon’ varieties of Coffea arabica still reign. This is where quality is ‘created’: the interaction between the farmer and his trees. These trees, seldom grown commercially, produce a lower yield crop compared to many of the modern varieties, but the taste is wonderfully smooth with a sweet fruity nature and rich, full body. Rusenyi coffee, a specialty Arabic coffee, grown on the shores of Lake Kivu in the Western Province has been voted the best among other types for its high quality, good aroma and citric taste. The 2007 golden cup competition was the first ever of its kind in Rwanda and Africa at large. It was planned as the first step, a trial run for conducting the highly revered cup of excellence competition in Rwanda in 2008. |