Hey everyone, Mark here.
I'm pretty excited about this bean for a few reasons.
1) It's unique and it's good (that's two reasons combined as one)! This coffee presents a distinct melon/cantaloupe/citrus combination with nice acidity. Okay, that's technical talk, sorry. But its good, and also often described by our baristas as "interesting". We will have this on pour over and retail bags soon! Come give it a try.
2) The second reason is because I have some refugee friends that lived in refugee camps Tanzania for over 10 years after fleeing civil war in Burundi. Whenever I see or hear that name I think about them and what they went through. A refugee is a displaced person that has been forced to cross national boundaries and cannot return safely. . If you don't know about refugee camps - it's not what you might be imagining. Refugee camps in Tanzania had/have at least 40,000 people in them. They aren't really camps - they are cities. Most refugees spend the majority, if not their entire lives in the camps. Mostly because they can't find asylum in safe countries. The supply (countries accepting refugees) is not meeting the demand.
The Mwalyego Cooperative that we are getting the beans from is in the South and I believe most of the refugee camps are in the North, near the Burundi border. I realize that the refugee camps are very likely completely unrelated to this coffee farming cooperative but here's to hoping some lives might be touched, in one way or another, by us buying and selling this coffee.
Cheers to you Baptist, Pierre, Silas, Jainess, Parfait, and Esther.