Barista Magazine

APR-MAY 2013

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THIS IS THE FIRST AFRICA WE SEE: It's coarse and bumpy, also amazingly quiet. It's almost midnight when we land in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, and all of us in the customs line look sleepy. I'm wide awake though, on high alert: I've been dreaming of this day for months when Barista Magazine publisher Kenneth R. Olson and I would arrive and meet up with Sarah and Jonathan Robinson, the brother-sister team behind Bean There Coffee Co., headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa. Everything takes a long time: visas, customs, and then Jonathan and Sarah paying the bill at the airport bar where they've been waiting for us. I'll learn that this is Ethiopia—all tasks from starting a company to buying a tank of gas takes an official stamp. There is paperwork for everything, and it's a consistently lengthy process. It takes close to 15 minutes for me to buy a bottle of water at the hotel; though I'm paying cash, I still need the authorized stamp, and the guy at reception has a hard time locating it. So we all slow down. We give ourselves up to this timetable. Almost immediately, we learn the sound of the sigh, something Sarah assures me is specific to Ethiopia. It goes like this: I ask for the bottle of water and the man at the hotel says, "Yes" and then hhhhuu, he sucks in a breath almost silently—it's a pause in the conversation. It's the moment the Ethiopians use to consider what happens next. It's a beautiful sound, soft as can be, but coming to an abrupt end. With your mouth wide open, take a quick breath in right now; that's what it sounds like. It's Ken's and my first trip to Ethiopia, but Sarah and Jonathan have been here many times. It's their practice to visit their producing partners as often as they can, at least once a year. This stop in Ethiopia is the last leg of a long trip Jonathan has taken with photographer and filmmaker Andrew Philip, a childhood friend of the Robinsons who has signed on to help with a video project Bean There is doing, to bring the sights and sounds and landscape of the people who grow coffee in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, and finally, Ethiopia back to their staffs in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa. We leave for Sidamo tomorrow. DAY 1 I first met Jonathan and Sarah at the East Africa Fine Coffee Association show in Rwanda in 2009. Sarah and I were judging the inaugural Rwanda Barista Championship, and there was plenty of time to get to know each other. I was immediately impressed with the Robinsons' business model, two aspects in particular: the fact that they only buy and serve coffees from Africa; and that everything about their company, down to their tagline, is about fair trade. Some of the coffee they buy—including the place we'll visit in Sidamo tomorrow—is certified by Fairtrade International (FLO). FLO establishes standards for Fairtrade certification, and Jonathan and Sarah are in constant close contact not only with their Fairtrade representatives, but also with their producing partners themselves. "The awarding of the certification does not mean Bean There is satisfied with that contribution," Sarah says. "Bean There continues to practice direct fair trade with its producers in conjunction with the FLO certification." When Sarah and Jonathan discuss their concept of "direct fair trade," they say, "It's not about special treatment. But rather about fair treatment." Make no mistake: They're not doing any of this for charity. The Robinsons seek to work with dedicated producers and co-ops in an effort to buy amazing coffees. "Fair trade [as a concept] is an essential and crucial element of Bean There Coffee Company," Jonathan says. "For too long, coffee producers have been exploited and treated unfairly through the practices of globalized free trade. Bean There deeply believes in trading fairly and ethically with coffee producers in Africa, thereby supporting the coffee farmers, their families, and communities. Fair trade is not an obligation, but an opportunity to actively support development, growth, and social empowerment." Essentially, their business is built on the concept of fair trade, which doesn't mean all their coffee is FLO-certified. They work with plenty of producers who are not certified, but the Robinsons pay them as if they are. Jonathan and Sarah grew up in Johannesburg, and they still live there. Family is everything to the Robinsons—Sarah shares a flat with their other sister, Julie; while Jonathan, his wife, and two young kids live in the same neighborhood. And Mom and Dad aren't far either; the Robinsons are part of each other's everyday lives. They're intensely proud of their African heritage, as well, which is why they've dedicated this business to celebrating great African coffees while also providing a home, via employment, for Africans in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Again, this isn't about charity; they expect a lot of commitment and responsibility from their staff, and they won't buy coffee if it doesn't taste good, no matter if it's certified. Bean There exists to hail African coffees and the people who grow, roast, and serve them. OUR CREW MEETS in the lobby of the Edna Hotel in Addis at just past 6 a.m. In total, we're eight: Jonathan and Sarah; Andrew the photographer; Kyle Freund of FLO who will be joining us for the Sidamo visit; Awgichewu Kebede, a young, laughing man who is from Sidamo and has been hired as our translator; Dame Regassa Chibsa, a representative of Schtuter Ltd., who will accompany us for the next four days; and Ken and I. We're waiting for the two Land Cruisers we hired to show, and eventually, in time, they do. It's near impossible for foreigners to drive in Addis, and you wouldn't want to anyway. It's wild and raucous behind the wheel in Ethiopia, with little to no regard for traffic lights and merging and even sidewalks. We pile in and begin the seven-hour drive to Sidamo, one of Ethiopia's most famous coffee-growing regions. It's mostly flat and dusty for the first few hours, and we spy camels in the distance, and so many donkeys trotting under mountains of teff tied to their backs. An annual bunchgrass, teff is widely cultivated and used in Ethiopia as an important food grain used to make injera. We see it everywhere. It's harsh, rough going on this one road, the main road through this part of the country. Occasionally we roll through a small village, just a few dilapidated storefronts, and always roadside coffee stands. We stop at several of these to sit among the locals and drink a steaming cup of freshly brewed coffee. Eight cups—one for each of us—costs the equivalent of about $1.25. We eventually reach the Aregash Lodge, famous among coffee buyers for the comfortable huts and delicious food prepared by the Greek wife of an Ethiopian man who owns the camp. In fact, that evening, the dining room of this rustic cabin is dominated by specialty-coffee buyers from Norway, Singapore, and, of course, the United States. Upon arrival, we dump our luggage in our individual huts, which are styled on the traditional homes in Ethiopia: round dwellings with cylindrical walls made of wattle and daub. The roof is conical and made of straw, and a single pole extends from the center of the roof to the floor. We will come to see hundreds of these types of huts in our time in Ethiopia. We load back into the Land Cruisers and head down the road to the Fero Cooperative, from which Sarah and Jonathan have been buying coffee since 2009. This 3,094-member co-op represents a total of 27,307 people. DAY 2 www.baristamagazine.com 57

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