I did a thing – I went to Rwanda. Three summers ago, I was turning 40 and my goddaughter was graduating high school… so I decided we needed an adventure.
At first I was going to take her on a mission trip to Honduras that my friend was planning, to work with Mama Carmen’s orphanage. Those of you that live in NW Arkansas may be familiar with Mama Carmen’s coffee shop. Well the orphanage is attached to a coffee farm or co-op or something like that, and it funds the orphanage at least in part. Ten years ago I got the privilege of becoming the coffee buyer for a large retailer for four years, and also got to play a key part in some sustainability and social impact initiatives for the company within my role. I didn’t know at the time that this combination would forever change my path. I fell in love with smallholder coffee farmers, and became a little obsessed with playing a role in solving for poverty and food scarcity within the coffee supply chain, which includes 25 million smallholder coffee farmers by most estimates. I figured when we went to Honduras with the trip intending to help in the orphanage that I would get to spend some time in the coffee fields – not that I know much but maybe I could help some.
Well, for some reason the mission trip got cancelled, so I needed to come up with another adventure, and secretly I was super excited because I had wanted to go to Africa for years since I had been a coffee buyer years before and had a couple trips to East Africa planned and cancelled for various reasons. I had some contacts working in coffee in Rwanda, so I called them up and asked if there were non-profits working there that we could meet with on the ground. The goal was to go, and see what God would show us. I wanted to meet with various non-profits, some faith based and some not, get into coffee fields some, work with women in the coffee industry, and just take in as many experiences as possible that are not available to us in this bubble we live in. I wanted to experience how smallholder coffee farmers live in Rwanda, understand their challenges, and pray that God would give me a vision of some way I could help. And I wanted my goddaughter to see what poverty looks like up close in another part of the world, so that would be fresh in her mind as she went into college and would be making choices about how to spend her life.
Oh my goodness. God is faithful if we just go. On this trip we got to spend two days with coffee farmers in two different regions, became dear friends with an amazing woman that owns two coffee wet mills and is pouring into those communities to make an impact, spend a day with the Heifer International country director seeing the good work that organization is doing in coffee communities, have dinner with the former Bishop of Rwanda who was Bishop during the genocide of 1994 and started a school for the orphans of genocide, became good friends with the country director for Bridge 2 Rwanda Scholars, canoe down the Musanze river with my new friends, spend a day trekking to see a family of mountain gorillas, have cocktails with Stephen Kinzer, and so much more.
In true Enneagram 7 fashion, I went without much of a plan. In fact, we had only two nights hotel booked before we left, out of the seven nights we would be there – the night we would land (after midnight, so kind of important) and the night before we would be hiking to see the gorillas (because they will LEAVE YOU if you are not there in the morning to head out with the group). We had a loose plan for the rest of the time, and some contacts on the ground that we would be meeting. These loose plans worked out perfect, because we got to crash at our new friend Tom’s home in Musanze and then again at his home in Kigali for two of these nights.
Tom’s house in Musanze is next door to Sunzu village, and we got to drop in on the kids going to primary school there. They were practicing English when we got there and wanted to practice asking us questions. “What is your name?” “What is your favorite sport?” “How old are you?” 🙂 Then they asked us to ask them questions. I asked “Who here has an idea that could make your village better?” Silence… CRICKETS… then one little boy in the back raised his hand and said “I think our village would be better if we could bring industry to it and create jobs.” I loved this – so I asked what kind of industry? “Notebook paper” (which was in short supply at the school). I looked at my friend Tom and said how do we make this happen? He shook his head and said he had no idea.
Well when I came back from Rwanda I had a book already waiting for me on making handmade papers out of common garden weeds. I started playing and started dreaming. And I started researching. Do you know you can make paper out of banana fiber? And do you know that none of the coffee farmers in Rwanda were growing bananas with their coffee like I had seen in other coffee growing regions? And do you know that growing bananas with coffee provides additional food for the community, and shade for the coffee which improves the quality of the coffee and possibly the amount they can get paid for that coffee if the quality improves? And do you know that banana stems grow from the ground up in one growing season, produce one bunch of bananas, and then need to be cut to the ground so the next stem can produce its bunch about six months later?
I had the beginning of an idea forming… let’s find a way to buy banana stems from coffee farmers and make something out of them. This demand will naturally encourage coffee farmers to plant bananas with their coffee, and they would reap the benefits of additional food, higher quality coffee, and additional income from the banana fiber industry we could build in the rural coffee growing region. There actually are quite a few potential uses for banana fiber waste… plenty to pilot and perfect in Rwanda and then roll out to coffee farmers in communities most impacted by poverty around the world.
So that’s the journey I’m on. It’s my passion project. I’ve been back to Rwanda once since then, and we narrowed down the many potential uses for banana fiber to our first pilot project which will focus on making burlap sacks for coffee export in the very communities where that coffee is grown. And my dear friend who owns two washing stations and is pouring into those communities to make an impact? She’s my partner. One of those communities is currently planting bananas to be ready for our project. I can’t wait to see where this leads and what we will learn along the way!