Visiting Rwanda by Harriet Lamb

At the Foundation, still full from all the Fairtrade Easter eggs we’ve enjoyed, news is still pouring in from companies and campaigners about the biggest and best ever Fairtrade Fortnight. Our producer partners who went up and down the country talking about Fairtrade were blown away – they couldn’t believe what ordinary people are doing to raise awareness and sales of Fairtrade. And what a nation of swap-a-holics... Not just a million and one swaps to Fairtrade were made but a whopping 1,062,220!

Among the companies, the Top of the Swaps included Traidcraft and Starbucks who swapped mountains of free brownies made with Fairtrade chocolate to go with their Fairtrade coffees. I popped into a local store and was so excited to see the lovely new single-origin Fairtrade coffee from Rwanda, launched during Fairtrade Fortnight. I bought a bag of the heavenly scented beans to enjoy at home. It brings back so many memories of when I visited the farmers in Rwanda last year – once with Starbucks and first with the dedicated quality coffee company, Union Hand Roasted.

Before going, I watched the film ‘Hotel Rwanda’. My daughter kept checking: was I crying? Or hiding my eyes from the horrors of man’s inhumanity to man during the 1994 genocide, the anniversary of which was marked last week? Instead, she was amazed that I had a stupid soppy little smile on my face. No-one watching that film can fail to be humbled and inspired by its true story of how hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina, saves over 1,000 refugees from the murdering mobs, showing endless ingenuity and a deep well of common humanity. That really is having the courage of your convictions.

Today, in that small country, with its lush rolling hills and rich red earth, it is equally hard not be to humbled and inspired by how its people – from senior civil servants to coffee farmers – are now pulling together with remarkable focus and ingenuity, to tackle the poverty that blights lives and feeds so many conflicts, to regenerate their economy and rebuild society.

I visited Maraba village, a bustling market, busy bank and a choice of hairdressing ‘Salons’ are all lively testimony to the economic revival stimulated by the villagers’ coffee cooperative. Ten years ago, this village was recorded as among the country’s poorest with people literally dying of hunger; their coffee was sold as the aptly named ‘café ordinaire’, fetching less than ordinary prices. Today, the Maraba villagers are commanding handsome premiums for their speciality coffee which has won prizes for the best coffee in Africa. Ten years ago, Angelique’s family sold raw coffee berries to passing middlemen; today, in a white coat, she is the first generation of cuppers in the cooperative’s own cupping laboratory, constantly testing their coffee’s quality, feeding back to the farmers, improving constantly. Today, they even roast and sell their own coffee locally in Rwanda, and export to, among others, Union Hand Roasted who sell Rwanda Maraba Fairtrade coffee in our UK shops shelves. The farmers are rightly full of pride for all they have achieved, excited showing their visitors everything from the Californian worms they have put to work on their compost in an experiment to the little kinder garden they have built for the community... With such farmers, Fairtrade is building an architecture of hope.