Today I’m remembering the amazing women I met last year while in Rwanda and Burundi.
The ladies who are part of a coffee community who are so often neglected and not appreciated. The ones who bear children, look after their homes, cook, clean, go out into the fields and toil for their livelihoods. The ladies who wear brightly coloured kitenge roaming the small villages outside Kigali and ones wearing their igetenge upcountry in Burundi.
The women who early in the morning go out to pick red ripe cherries off their coffee trees. The ones that gently let the cherries slip through their hands into woven baskets before they’re taken to coffee washing stations to be weighed and processed. The ladies who carry their children on their backs, ripe red cherries in bags on their heads while holding up their igetenge’s making their trudge along the roadside look ever so graceful.
Here’s a shout-out to the ladies who sift through coffee parchment while coffee is on drying tables. The ladies who sing together, laugh together, eat lunch together, dance together, create a livelihood together. The ones who look out for each other and form part of their own coffee community.
The women who work hard to bring coffee to us.
I’m honoured to have met these women, I wish one day you could meet them too.
Happy International Women’s Day to the many women in our world wide coffee community.
Female farmers walking in North Burundi
Bean to Cup 