I quite often get coffee sent to me in the post. Yesterday however, I received a bag of coffee which was was different to the rest. For starters it was green beans, usually the coffee I get is from roasters. Secondly, the label was handwrtten.

Our friend Fiona, regularly travels out to Uganda. In 2002 she started work building a library for the children of St Michael’s Primary School. I’ve heard her talk in the past about the children in Uganda and how the school is coming along. Upon her return this time though, she thought to bring me back a bag of green beans picked by the children, from the school grounds.

Now, obviously I don’t advocate child-labour! But there is something magical about a bag of beans picked by the local children from a school that Fiona has helped to improve. To be honest, I feel very humbled that they did this for me, that is, asuming Fiona didn’t force them to!

So before I get on with talking about the coffee, here’s a bit of information about St Michael’s as a way of saying thanks to the children and Fiona. St Michael’s is located in a rural village near Namunyumba, which is about 4 hours north of Kampala, the capital. The school has around 750 girls aged 5-15, some of which are orphaned due to AIDS. The average class size is 110 girls to one teacher. The school day starts at 5AM and finishes at 8.30PM, the girls at St Michael’s also clean the school, do the gardening and look after the animals, so in that respect it is entirly self-suficient.

As you can see though, everyone appears to be happy! More so than most kids in the UK ironically, despite the incredibly long day and huge classes.

Back to the coffee – I’ve not had Ugandan coffee before. I have had Kenyan and Tanzanian though, both of which proved thoroughly enjoyable. Fiona tells me that the coffee was picked and then dry processed on the patio outside the school for around 2 weeks, with everyone rushing out to cover it up when it threatened to rain. The girls then bashed the parchment off in wooden bowls that sound very much like a mortar and pestle.

Looking at the beans they seem to be in good condition, fairly consistent moss green in colour and eager to be roasted. Which brings me to my first question, how should I roast them? – Espresso or brewed? They are arabica beans, despite the fact that robusta is quite common and indigenous to Uganda. I have read that Ugandan coffee is more similar to Indonesian than African, which leads me to think, lower acidity, good body, so I might get away with an espresso roast?

Feel free to send a message to the children in the comments, now that Fiona has supplied them with computers, hopefully they will be able to see themselves on the internet!

Full Flickr set here.
Donate money to coffee kids here.

See how the roasting went here.

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