Four hours drive east of the Ugandan capital of Kampala, past the northern shores of the vast Lake Victoria and across the Nile river, the old British colonial outpost town of Mbale has been our base for the past four days.
To the east of town loom the flanks of the broad Mount Elgon massif, which straddles the borders of Uganda and Kenya. The mountain has been the focus of our visit, as it’s home to the thousands of tiny landholders who between then produce the coffee that Trade Aid has recently begun buying through the Gumutindo co-operative.
Getting out to the mountain from Mbale each day we’ve gotten a small taste of the make-up of the local agricultural economy as much of the produce is transported, uncovered, along the red ochre dirt roads that we’ve been driving along. A frequent and distinctive sight are men riding ancient bicycles – the main mode of transport in these parts – which are loaded with up to five towering bunches of bananas at a time. Sugar canes are a popular local snack and are sold, in eight foot lengths, all along the roadsides here. In many small towns, we see molasses being produced in battered old drums. It’s a key ingredient in the popular local firewater, which is affectionately known as ‘kill me quick’.
Motorcycles –along with bicycles - are the main passenger transport in this area, and up to four adults will all squeeze together onto one machine.
Like so much of this part of the world, this area has a violent recent history. Speaking with Mount Elgon coffee farmers, we’ve heard a number of harrowing personal accounts of the dark days they lived through during the most brutal years of Idi Amin’s regime in the late 1970’s. During that time, food became very scarce and coffee ceased to be traded locally.
One farmer told us how, as a schoolteacher who also grew coffee, he used his schoolchildren to help him smuggle coffee over the hillsides and into Kenya. The trip was arduous – 12 hours each way, in the dark, with 30kg loads on their heads – and dangerous, with government troops active on the mountain. But they had little option; without income from coffee they would have had no bread to eat. Even salt – that cheapest of commodities – was so hard to come by that his father took to carrying his supply around with him in his coat pocket.
Willington Wamayeye, who is now the inspirational manager of Gumutindo, told us how as a teenager at the time he had taken his father’s bicycle and ridden off in desperate search of food for his family. Eventually, he found work harvesting cassava. As payment for his labour he received 100kg of cassava which he had to wheel, by bike, the 50km back to his hungry (and no doubt very worried) parents.
Although Amin is now long gone, the coffee economy has continued to rise and fall and it collapsed badly in the 1990’s. Along the way, the militarily-installed government of Uganda has been no provider for the people; very little government support makes it way out to the provinces. Many classrooms lack roofs, and so when it starts to rain (as it frequently does) children have to be sent home. With local temperatures getting warmer in recent years, virulent malarial mosquitoes have migrated into the region and many children now die for lack of effective treatment.
If people are going to get ahead out here, they will have to do things for themselves. But for an average farmer here, who has a tiny holding of only 250 coffee trees (many of which are old and neglected – a legacy of the turbulent past when markets came and went) and less than half a hectare of land, what are the chances? This is where the Gumutindo co-op, under Willington’s devoted leadership, has stepped in; thousands of farmers are working together to find better prices for their coffee from fair trade buyers. They’re working hard to improve the quality and the quantity of coffee they produce, and they’re making a great fist of this. The quality is already remarkable – some of the best I’ve ever seen – thanks to an excellent training program and hard work by a small number of highly motivated farmers who in turn are motivating others. Many of them are now planting more coffee, a sure sign that they have a fresh confidence in the future of their industry.
I have great hopes that if buyers like us can increase our purchases of Gumutindo’s coffee at fairer prices, that all sorts of things will be possible for these farmers and their families. They’re already roofing the open air classrooms here, are putting in wells to cut down travel times for water collection, they’ve built a health centre and have repaired roading and bridges. They dream of supporting more of their children into higher education in the future, and to continue to expand their production and their incomes as they set about rebuilding their economy with or without government assistance.
I share these dreams with them.
Justin Purser, Trade Aid food buyer
0 comments:
Post a Comment