Notes from Gumutindo

A Fairtrade Co-operative in Uganda

John Harrington is a volunteer from Newtown in Powys. John is currently in Mbale in Uganda with Gumutindo, a Fair Trade Co-operative. He is working with them in a number of ways including organisational development, governance issues and supporting the staff team.John is going to keep in contact with us regularly with his experiences at the Co-operative.

From Mt Elgon to South Wales: the Fairtrade Organic coffee route 

UGANDA UPDATE

December 2009

The second rainy reason is petering out and may indeed have ended-nobody is quite sure- and a hot and dusty time will soon be starting and this to continue until March or even April. In this area around Mt Elgon, the second rains have been good and have given people a chance to catch up through second planting after the losses of the main rainy season earlier in the year. This is not true in other parts of the country, especially in the north where there are still food supply problems and hunger.

The Gumutindo storage sheds in Mbale are filling up with large 60kg bags of coffee beans coming down from the ten producer co-ops on the mountain. Prices are high which is good for the farmers. However, as the season progresses, this puts pressure on Gumutindo finances as the farmers are paid well before coffee arrives with its customers around the world. Under Fairtrade arrangements, it is possible to get some pre-finance from customers and this helps considerably. But it is still an anxious time. The first containers will be setting off for customers in Germany within the next week or so. The compound is now busy with groups of women giving the coffee beans a final hand sort before they are ready for export. They sit under the trees in groups and manage to do this work whilst able to chat and making it look effortless. It must be laborious but it also seems to me both colourful and sociable in the way much agricultural work must have been in the west in days gone by.

I have continued my work under the general heading of "organisational development" and during this period have started some training with the management committees of the producer co-op societies on the mountain. I have found this a real challenge as I try hard to translate some difficult ideas such as the difference between "management" and "governance" into language that can be understood by farmers who sometimes have poor English. The training is presented with Willington Wamayeye, the director and Nimrod Wambedde the chair of the main co-op so I have good translation into the local language if needed. But sometimes it is the underlying ideas behind the words that can cause confusion. As I say, a real challenge but a truly interesting one.

A real highlight of this trip was an invitation to visit a women farmer's drama group recently started in one of the coffee producer co-ops high up on the mountain. The performance was held in a very humble mud and tin roofed shack itself set in beautiful scenery with fine views to the valley below. Children had gathered to watch, aware that something of interest was happening and anyway there was a mzungu(white man) about which itself never fails to arouse interest.
The play, which I cannot do full justice to, was about how growing good coffee using organic principles and being a member of the co-op can be a means to economic and social improvement for women and how this can be of benefit to the whole village community including husbands. What was powerful and telling about this was that the play had grown and taken shape from the women's own discussions. It was a moving experience and as a trainer, I was struck by how the play had dealt with complex and sensitive issues so effectively. It concluded with a song and dance routine having all of the usual Ugandan exuberance. I felt very honoured to be the first visitor for the performance.

As mentioned before, the Mbale region has been chosen for a United Nations Development Partnership scheme for a climate change mitigation and adaptation programme. Both the UK government and Welsh Assembly government are now partners in the scheme and will add resources. For this programme to succeed it needs an effective partnership between the state sector, civil society and what are called non government organisations(NGOs) and the private or business sector. This would be demanding anywhere but in Uganda has particular challenges. However, given the clear and early impact of climate change on this part of sub-Saharan Africa, it is a challenge that must be met. Gumutindo, as a business which has sustainable agriculture and organic coffee growing as a central part of its business, is involved and keen to contribute to this programme as it unfolds over the next years.

As I have mentioned before Climate Change is not well understood here which given the miniscule CO2 contribution of the average person in Uganda and their lack of experience of a fossil fuel economy, is not surprising. What changes they are experiencing are attributed to local perceived alterations such as the disappearance of trees which of course does play a part in climate change. Later this week I will be presenting material and information to the Gumutindo field workers who are mostly trained agronomists, on the facts of climate change and its implications for this part of Africa and for coffee growing. An important step if people are to get to grips with and come up with solutions to what is happening on their own land. The timing, I am sure you will agree, could not be better.

Soon I will be packing up and heading back to Wales to enjoy that distinctive Welsh rain that I can testify, it is possible to miss and to enjoy Christmas with family and friends. There were Christmas items in the shops when I left in October so I am happy to have missed all that but am ready for some tinsel and carols now. There are few signs yet of the coming festivities -which is a very big family feast and celebration here- except for one unmissable one: there are more and more fat turkeys to be seen walking about, quite unaware of their fate. A few days ago I saw a truly amazing sight. On top of a matatu, the notorious taxi minibuses referred to before, sitting on the roof rack were five live turkeys all facing forward and looking as if they were going for spin.

November 2nd 2009

It is just over a year since I first came to Africa and now I am back for my third trip, working with Gumutindo coffee co-op based in their office and warehouse site in  Mbale. I am not the wide  eyed “new boy” any longer but it is still an extraordinary experience to leave Europe and arrive here. Whilst home I read Richard Dowden’s  “Africa, altered states,ordinary miracles” and he has caught this transition beautifully so I  will quote a section:
 “I have watched the sun set, shrunken and mean, over a cold, drab London street and stood outside a mud hut next morning on a Kenyan hillside and seen it rise in glory over the East African plains. Africa is close.
Few go there. Africa has a reputation: poverty, disease, war. But when outsiders do go they are often surprised by Africa’s welcome, entranced rather than frightened. Visitors are welcome and cared for in Africa. If you go you will find most Africans friendly, gentle and infinitely polite. You will frequently be humbled by African generosity….There is no click-on- have- a -nice day smile in Africa. Africans meet, greet and talk, look you in the eye and empathize, hold hands and embrace, share and accept from others without twitchy self-consciousness. All these things are as natural as music in Africa.”

The book is no tourist guide by the way but a clear-eyed look at Africa today that often makes uncomfortable reading.

I have been here for nearly three weeks now and after a long summer of spending time with family and friends, gardening, walking and jam and chutney making back in mid Wales, I am once again catching up with the coffee business. After a good season just past, in which twenty six containers of high quality Fairtrade and nearly all organic, Arabica coffee were sent to various parts of the world, now the storage sheds in Mbale are almost empty. The coffee is being harvested up on the mountain and as I write slowly starting to arrive as parchment here in town. Yesterday, Friday, was in fact  a sign of things to come with three separate lorries arriving with bags of coffee from the small producer co-ops.

We are now in the second and shorter rainy season and so far it has rained most afternoons and this has meant that farmers are finding it hard to get their coffee dry before it comes to Mbale. It is tested on arrival and if more than 13% moisture content, then it needs to be dried further before being accepted into the store. So for the last couple of days every available space outside in the Mbale compound is taken up with coffee drying on large canvas sheets. In the meantime a real “weather eye” needs to be kept on the mountain for signs of approaching rain so that it can be collected up and covered in time. Fortunately, most of it had managed to get dry when I left yesterday afternoon at the end of the week.

There is some anxiety about the crop this year and whether enough coffee can be collected from Gumutindo farmers for the orders already agreed. The main rainy season was disappointing and you have probably read of the drought in Kenya which shares Mt. Elgon with Uganda. This has affected the coffee crop and in other parts of the country has seriously affected basic food not just cash crops. There are some problems on the Ugandan side of the  mountain but they are not severe, I am told, and people have replanted food crops to try and make up the losses in the second rainy season which we are now in. 

On my first day in the office, I was given an opportunity to go up the mountain to attend the  Agm of one of the producer co-ops viz  Buginyanya where I had spent a week on the previous trip. Now, I know, normally nobody gets excited about the opportunity to attend an agm even one at nearly 7000ft up  but I had an idea that this would be different and so it turned out. I had hoped that I could sit quietly at the back and if need be nod off, still being tired from my journey back to Mbale, but alas, being a visitor, had to sit at the top table in full view. So with my eyes propped open for a meeting that was to last six hours, I watched the drama unfold.

At first the normal agm business. This took longer than it would in the Uk because, speeches and responses are an important part of the meeting ritual here and these can be long. I  know many people in Wales enjoy making speeches but everybody in Uganda seems to have a long speech in them whether farmer, politician or clergy. I should add here, that for various  reasons this was the first agm, that had been  held for three years and what began to emerge from the floor was that things had become a little too cosy for many of the farmers liking. To add to the drama, when the treasurer was giving her report, there was what can only be described as a cloudburst directly overhead and the racket from the rain on the tin roof of the meeting and storage hall was indescribable. Nothing could be heard or done until it passed in five minutes or so. However it was perceived, this certainly added to the drama. When it was time for the elections and canvassing, it became very animated with much gesticulation and many raised voices. For the election itself, it was outside to form an orderly line behind the candidate of your choice whilst last minute canvassing continued across the lines made. All this took nearly an hour and looked, for a time, as if it could degenerate into a mere slanging match. One of the farmers said to me over the noise of all this and clearly with pride “what do you think of our democracy?” –this is English. ( This meeting was being carried on, I should add , in the local language, Lugisu, with people translating for me as and when an opportunity arose.) Then the results and a new committee elected whilst keeping the original chair which seemed to me and others observing, a sound way forward. I was impressed; agms with feeling! There were just over a hundred farmers at the meeting  and  farmer’s dress code for an agm on Mt. Elgon : shirt and tie but black wellington boots  for footwear. This was the second time I had seen-the other was over a land dispute at another co-op nearby-what seemed like endless and ritualised  talking eventually coming to an agreement on the way forward. It is easily forgotten because of what we in the west hear of African politics, that there is a tradition of talking and consensus building here. It appears to me to be in good shape at least at the village level.

After six hours with just a bottle of warm coca-cola we, the visitors, were invited to a nearby hut for a meal. Matooke and boiled chicken never tasted better. I have noticed that many of these huts use old newspapers as a wall-paper and decoration and on this one there were pictures of the Pope, Queen Elizabeth and various Ugandan politicians. I have seen this collection before and a couple of times have seen pope and queen next to Saddam Hussein! I cannot even begin to frame what might be the right question to ask about that combination.

For my time here, I am  staying with a Ugandan family a few miles out of town and enjoying it very much. I have a small but comfortable room as part of an L shaped complex of houses with various related families living in them and surrounded by a wonderful Ugandan vegetable garden of about an acre. I have not worked out all of the relationships yet but am making progress. There are chickens everywhere which I like but the racket from the cockerels crowing just outside my bedroom window at 4am is not easy to get used to.

Finally: the taxi or matatu drivers are legendary in Uganda for their awful driving but they provide “public transport” and will go anywhere. I should add that the taxis are here minibuses, always Japanese (Hiace) and nearly always white, spattered with mud, with a broken blue stripe on the side. Many sport their football teams( Uk premier league - Man U. Chelsea,Arsenal  and Liverpool the most popular) but they also often express on the back window some odd religious sentiments. One has “God  is also a passenger” and another ,the  enigmatic “May God forgive us” . I do keep wondering if that refers to the driving or something else.

John

Easter 2009

The rains have finally come and at times in a very dramatic way as thunder clouds come tumbling down off the mountain. Safely inside, they are brilliant entertainment better than the widest screen tv but they are dangerous with constant lightning, strong winds and a deluge of water. Already there are stories of some people in nearby villages losing their houses as their roofs are taken off and the water then wrecks the mud walls. But mostly people are delighted that the unusually long dry season is over. From first light until dark, between storms, people are out in their plots sowing the seeds for this season's vegetable harvest. This is not an added extra or an attempt to "grow their own" but a matter of their families livelihood.

All the work on the soil is done with hoes-as seen in so many pictures of Africa-and I was surpised to see that this simple implement, can be used to turn the earth, then weed it-couch is a major problem here- and most surpisingly of all, then be used to create a fine seed bed. Beans and maize are the first things to be planted and there are already a few gardens where I can see the plants a couple of inches high. All this work is done mainly by women though I have seen some men and sometimes whole families in the gardens. Certainly many young children are involved. I have not seen a single cultivator or any of the implements we use. I watched one woman planting the other day and this has clearly been learned over generations. She had a pot on her head with bean seeds in it. She walked along and with her foot made a small indentation and then dropped a seed in and covered it again with her foot and all of this done without any bending at all and the pot safely balanced on her head. I doubt if this would work on our Welsh clays but in this rich light soil, no problem and lovely to watch.

I have recently spent five days up on the mountain staying in the home of a coffee farmer Oliva Kishero and her husband Joseph. (I understand that Oliva recently featured on the BBC programme "The One Show" about Gumutindo coffee.) The village, Buginyanya, is just over 6000ft and as I have said before, it is extraordinary what grows at that height here: bananas, avocados, mangoes as well as arabica coffee and all the usual vegetables including onions and garlic. When I tell them that few trees of any kind grow above 1500ft in our country, they find that hard to believe.

I talked with members of the co-op up there and visited various farmers on their small farms or shambas. I talked with them about how they understood the role of the co-op, about Fairtrade and organic cultivation of their coffee. I told them of the many Fairtade groups in Wales and how volunteers work hard to promote Fairtrade including their coffee. I was attempting to get some idea of what steps might help farmers to understand better their role within Gumutindo. One day we walked along steep narrow paths to another village to visit a neighbouring co-op to do the same. Finally, I hired motorbikes for myself and Oliva to visit one of the newest co-ops to talk to them about what support they are looking for in their recruitment of new farmers. Whilst at this last village, Kikuyu, our motorbike drivers became animated as they spotted a storm approaching and hurried us along to make the trip back. It was a hair-raising ride back along mountain tracks where I held on for dear life feeling unable to slow them down as I could see the storm getting closer and closer. We made it to within about a hundred yards of our destination up a steep track before the storm struck. We had to get off and dash home in the downpour as the track was now as slick as an ice rink.

Sharing the life of an ordinary farmer-even for a short time- here was a great experience. The people in the villages are if anything even warmer than in the town and the children as usual are fascinated at having a mzungu-white man-in their village.

The domestic cooking,where I was staying, is done on an open fire in a covered shed-it can be smokey-but sitting around the fire waiting for supper, with fireflies dancing about outside and the hens all crouched about the cooking area, all lit by the fire and a small wick lamp is a quite special experience that I will treasure. However, I have to say I was pleased to get back at the end of the week, tired and muddy, to a shower and the comparative "home comforts" of my room here in town.

Two weeks ago in Mbale, we were visited by a United Nations Climate Change delegation accompanied by a Welsh group including Jon Townley of the Welsh Assembly Government, Wales for Africa scheme which has been supporting my own work here. This is an important topic and I can only give the briefest details here but we know that sub Saharan Africa and the Mount Elgon area in particular are fragile areas in which even a modest increase in temperature-now thought to be unavoidable-could have serious consequences for hundreds of thousands of livelihoods. Because of the partnership work which has already been done in Mbale region, this area has been chosen to pilot climate change amelioration work. What this means in practice is yet to be decided though reforestation seems to be an agreed priority. During the day's visit which started with a large meeting in the morning here in town of all the interested parties, a visit was made, in the afternoon, to one of the nearer Gumutindo co-ops to talk directly with farmers about changes they were observing and their own ideas on meeting these challenges. I must say that I was impressed with the way in which the well dressed and be-suited members of the delegation were able to sit in a basic shed-the coffee store with an unusual number of insects buzzing about-and both explain and listen to what the farmers had to say.

Climate change, as we understand it, is not well understood here but farmers are increasingly concerned about the fact that something is changing and patterns they have been used to for generations are altering outside of the normal. Of course, we know that farmers will always complain about the weather and it is important to sift this out. Whilst up in the mountain and before the delegation arrived ,I had collected stories from around and at different altitudes that all point to something quite distinctive happening. There are more landslides; this made worse by heavier rains,de-forestation and population pressures;. there are stronger winds and streams drying up that nobody can remember ever going dry and all agree on increased temperatures. The most common story of all is that the ability to know when the rains will come and therefore when to plant-passed down through the generations- for which there were a host of signs, such as insects and birds is no longer working. There was a sense of urgency in the work proposed by the UN team but also a general realisation that more solid data is needed to help target this work. As they say, this one will run and run.

In the meantime work goes on at the Mbale site of Gumutindo and containers are leaving regularly now with their cargo of coffee beans for Mombasa and the world. Up on the mountain the rain means that the coffee trees will soon be flowering and with good fortune, next season's crop will be on its way. The cycles are as real here as they are in northern climes but as I am learning to appreciate, just different and the sense of re-birth is as important here as there.

Finally, some common greetings in Uganda: "How was your night?" usually asked in response to a "good morning". "How is your life?" (a long reply is not expected). "Well prayed", said on meeting people after church and "Shall we go?" not really a greeting but more a rather gentle sales pitch by boda-boda bicycle drivers.

John
Mbale

Easter Sunday 2009
Expenses for the work with Gumutindo Coffee Cooperative Enterprise Ltd are funded under the Wales for Africa Grant Scheme of the Welsh Assembly Government

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Mbale
March 2009

I left Mbale for Wales just days before Christmas and returned as the first daffodils were coming out there at the beginning of March.
On the Saturday, two days before I left, I was working alongside the Newtown Fairtrade group handing out cups of coffee and biscuits to passers by as part of Fairtrade Fortnight and the following Wednesday, I was back with Gumutindo Coffee in Mbale. I do feel very fortunate to be able to do this work and discover new challenges in retirement.
I arrived in a very dusty and bone dry part of Africa and with none of the green freshness and moderate heat that had greeted me when I first arrived in October last year. It is, hopefully, near the end of the dry season which started in late November. I have found it difficult to sleep at night as there is no cooling rain and the air quality is poor on many days when there is no breeze. This is not caused by the things that normally cause it in the West but by small smouldering fires everywhere burning garden rubbish and later in the day by the many, many cooking fires. This with the dust thrown up on the roads makes quite a mix. I have tried to find out why there is not more composting rather than burning here and I am told it is just the way things are done. I have also been told that it helps to keep down pests and given that there are no frosts that make some sense. Anyway, they tell me the rain will come "soon"- which is left quite indefinite. We did have a good but short storm last evening when it rained for a good half hour and the ridge beyond where I am staying was lit up every few minutes by flashes of lightning. Today the ground is as hard and dry as ever. I am looking forward to regular rain like I never thought I would.

Things at the Gumutindo compound in Mbale, where I am based, have moved along since I returned home. Ten containers have now been despatched to various parts of the world to Fairtrade customers(The orders for the year are for 25 containers and only two had gone when I left in December). All the coffee for the season has now been harvested and nearly all of it sent down from the Producer Co-ops in the mountains to the depot here. The main task now is sorting and as those of you who have read early journals know, this is all done entirely by hand either on the ground outside,under the trees in the compound for shade, or on three conveyor belts in one of the sheds. It is done by casual workers, all women, who have done this work for a number of years and for whom this is an important part of their seasonal income After that, the beans are bagged up in hessian sacks according to grade and stacked ready for loading on to the container. A crucial stage here is that each customer is sent samples of the coffee ordered and it is only after these samples are tasted and approved that the order is prepared for despatch. Although a lot of the work here in the compound is manual there is again the striking contrast between the old way of doing things and the new that I have referred to before; for instance on Saturday last I attended a workshop in which a very sophisticated spreadsheet was presented to staff which will track all the contracts for selling coffee as they move through the different stages right up until they leave the port of Mombasa.

I am continuing my work on various staff issues and training and will be spending three weeks of my time here up in the mountains visiting and supporting the smaller producer co-ops of which there are ten scattered around the Mt Elgon area.

My impressions are now not "first" but I am again struck by the hospitality and natural graciousness of people here and by how big smiles are readily bestowed. Today, Sunday, I was invited to visit the home of my motorbike driver Akimu and met his wife and two young children plus other members of an extended family for whom he has responsibility at the age of 27-his father has recently died. He had one small room for his immediate family and had "borrowed" a larger room for my visit because his had no furniture other than a bed in it. They entertained me in very friendly and relaxed way and said how my visit had made them happy. A delicious meal of rice, sweet potato and a meat sauce was cooked on a tiny little stove fuelled by charcoal, outside. The visit was helped by the fact that his half brother was a Liverpool supporter, that they had the day before beaten Manchester United 4-1 and that Akimu's little daughter immediately took to a bouncy ball that I had brought as a present. Interestingly too, they are a mixed household in terms of religion as Akimu is a Moslem and other members of the family are Christian. They said they had lots of feasts to celebrate together!

Finally a story that may challenge a few stereotypes of Africa. Pupils of a secondary school in Arua district which is in north-western Uganda- this from a national newspaper of 6th March- marched their headmaster 10kms all the way to the local education offices and demanded that he be replaced. They said he had a poor working relationship with teachers and had failed to manage the academic matters of the school. I have not heard of the outcome.

John Harrington
15th March 2009

Expenses for the work with Gumutindo Coffee Cooperative Enterprise Ltd are funded under the Wales for Africa Grant Scheme of the Welsh Assembly Government