This week at the shop we have been working on baked goods. During my time here, I have learned that Inzozi Nziza is a well-known shop not only throughout Butare, but also throughout all of Rwanda. As I have been meeting different people, they have been impressed that I’m working in Rwanda’s only ice cream shop and usually have compliments about times they have visited…the only complaint I receive on a regular basis (usually from Americans) is about the cookies. It’s not that they are bad, but they are more like cake biscuits than cookies. As I watched the women make them, I quickly understood why- when the next step in the recipe called for placing the cookies on a baking tray, they added around two cups of unnecessary milk. Now that I knew the problem, we have been doing re-training for the cookie recipes all week and adding new flavors. One new batch we tried were simple sugar cookies with sprinkles, and the whole batch sold in less than a day! I’m still having trouble with the chocolate chip cookies though; milk chocolate just isn’t the same as semi sweet for chips.
Besides work at the shop, I spent two days this week going into the field visiting villages nearby Butare. Yesterday I went to a coffee coop named Koakaka in Karaba with my Peace Corp Volunteer roommate. She works for a US funded project named SPREAD, which develops coffee cooperatives. She holds meetings for the leaders of the their communities to help solve various problems and encourage family planning and the use of health centers amongst other things. Also while in Karaba, I got to see the entire process of making coffee from cherries to green beans. I was able to see how they are washed, dried, and finally sorted before they come to our shop, and we roast them.
Earlier this week I also got to go on a field visit to the coffee cooperative in Maraba with my friend Brandon who also works for SPREAD as an intern this summer. Brandon is in charge of a program called theatre for development in which he works with leaders at different coffee cooperative and teaches them to become performing artists so that they can perform skits for their communities about various problems and help them achieve solutions. The day I visited, the group preformed two skits depicting two different problems: one was about marriage and the other was about health problems. In the skit about marriage, a man was being pressured by his family to get married to woman who would be a good wife although he wanted to finish school. Even after he started to agree to the marriage, they did not end up getting married because she was uneducated. In the second skit about health problems, a woman’s husband refused to believe that his wife had malaria and would not let her go to the health clinic.
The biggest problems the cooperatives bring up in skits are alcoholism, malnutrition, family violence, lack of cooperation between coffee farmers, and sugar daddies. By practicing portraying these problems with a small group here, these coffee farmers will hopefully perform these skits to their communities helping bring about solutions to these various problems. It was also interesting to me to see that most of the leaders taking part in Brandon’s workshops were women, and the majority of coffee farmers are women as well. By getting into the field this week, I was able to see a glimpse of life right outside Butare. With being so involved with our shops new coffee project, it was important for me to see not only the steps to developing coffee, but also what kid of support these communities of farmers are receiving to maintain a sustainable lifestyle.
Here are a few pictures from my trip!
Coffee beans under the Rwandan sky.
Coffee beans out to dry.
A skit at Maraba. School children from a nearby school come and watch during their break.
Rwanda = the land of 1000 hills.
Student drumming group that two of the women at the shop take part in.
