All things coffee: harvesting, processing, and finally roasting

October 3, 2020

Arabica beans pattern of ripening
(proximal to distal)

Living the Rural Life

 

This has been an interesting season in life, being isolated in a small village in Africa.  We are learning more about processing grain, the diversity of seeds, and how incredibly time-consuming farming can be!  Any little machine that has been developed in farming serves to make the process more efficient.  We bought a small de-pulping machine for processing coffee and it is saving us days of work!  Picking coffee still is very time-consuming, but the processing less so.  We pick the beans and then float them to eliminate those with lower density.  We then de-pulp them, float them again, and then take the “sinkers,” the good beans. Then you ferment the “sinkers” in water for 24-48hours to remove the mucilage and then put them out in the sun.  It is a beautiful process and makes harvesting coffee fun!  And this is just to obtain the high quality beans.  Then you need to dry and age the coffee and roast it.  Warren has designed his own coffee roaster with local materials…rebar, parts of old hospital beds, bike gears, old chains, and a recycled motor. After some modifications of the paddle to turn more evenly, we had a successful coffee roast tonight!  I will never complain when buying good coffee again.

A handmade coffee roaster

A coffee de-pulper

 

Threshing soybeans

Then there is growing soybeans…also a fascinating process and one with fewer simple machines to help here in Africa.  You wait for the plants to dry out in the fields, but not too long with the rains. Then you dry them in the sun for a week or so.  Next you thresh the grains out of the plants by stacking the plants, and beating them to free the beans.  Then you winnow the grains by hand with a sort of flat basket to remove the chaff, soil, rocks ( I have finally mastered the basics of winnowing grain by hand)!  Lastly you remove the bad grains.  This is quite labor intensive.  If you plant more than one species of soybeans the grains can ripen at different paces and you might have to do this process twice for the same field.  

We recently harvested a field of soybeans covering a surface area of 375m2 and obtained 22kg of grain, or 60grams/m2 or 1kg/16m2.  Just for perspective, in Congo 1kg of soybeans costs $1.  In practical teams this means you need to farm an area 4m X 4m for 3months to obtain $1.  This seems like a lot of work to me, considering that it is all done by hand. We are going to try some other species of soybeans to see if we can improve the grain yield.  There are so many variables from the species of grain planted, the weather (especially the rain), and the expertise in the harvest. 

All of this makes me appreciate the food I eat much more.  It also makes me more willing to pay for food grown by local farmers.  I want to support local farmers and adapt my eating habits to do so!  Peanuts are a whole other level of complexity and processing, for another day. 

 

 

Starting Kindergarten

Emmanuel is officially starting kindergarten this year.  He is learning to read and write.  We are so thankful for his Ugandan teacher Angel and a rich learning environment where he can learn things using his hands.  

 

The A,B,Cs, sound recognition, and reading are coming as well but generosity, compassion, and a desire to help others are also qualities that must be taught and experienced.  Curiosity is another quality we are trying to teach, as it relates to nature, plants and animals.  He understands a lot about how animals are born and has helped in the birthing of a baby goat.  He is also learning how to recognize and care for sick animals.  We live in a great place for him to grow in many ways.  It is very true that the world is a child’s playground.

 

Family

 

We, like so many of you, are thinking about and missing our extended families, grandmas and grandpas. We are really  hoping that things open up again soon so that we can see Warren’s parents in Switzerland.  We miss my parents in the US and our extended family and friends.  We love all of you!!!  In some ways it feels like life has been put on pause; in other ways it feels like our roots have deepened.  We are thankful that in Christ we are united in heart with those that we love, even when we are apart.

-Pray as the hospital goes through difficult security & financial times.  There are less consultations and hospitalizations and staff salaries are down significantly.  Pray that our staff would have their needs met, feel encouraged, and that they would have the courage to keep working.  

-Pray that we would proclaim and live out the Gospel as we should.  

-Pray that we would be able to take some needed vacation time very soon.

Blessings,

Lindsey for the Coopers

Starting hibiscus plants from shoots

A hospital meal

Learning from our agronomist friend Esdras

Very special missionary kids

Attempted Suicide

We were enjoying Emmanuel’s birthday party when they called me to the hospital. It was a man who had attempted to commit suicide.  I groaned inwardly, probably outwardly as well.  Lindsey was beside herself.  It just was not what I was hoping to deal with...but I went. It was an interesting and terrible case.  It affected me deeply and continues to do, even weeks after, as I struggle to write about it.  It is tempting to simply not write about the hard cases, the sad things.  These are the realities which we deal with every day.  I share it not to shock or horrify, but to perhaps show something of Gods grace in a broken world. 

Anyway, without going into all the details, this man obtained a weapon, tried to shoot himself in the brain, but ended up shooting his face off.  When he came in the wound looked so bad that he did not seem human.  I have pictures, but they would get me banned from Facebook.  The blast had destroyed the jaw, the maxilla, the nose and the left eye.  He was breathing from a hole where he face had been.  

Later on I heard the rest of the story.  It is worth telling. Since he was a soldier, the local commander was involved.  When he saw the injury, he figured that he was dead and made arrangements for burial.  They had obtained a coffin, dug a grave and they were waiting around, when the improbable happened.  His phone rang.  Well, it turns out he was only “mostly dead,” as the saying goes.  Everyone watched in amazement as he reached out his hand and took the phone out of his pocket.  At that point they decided to come to the hospital.  I’m still not sure who was calling him.  I like to think that it was God.  

Anyway, he was completely neurologically intact.  We had a pretty serious discussion about whether on not he wanted to live.  He communicated with hand-motions and even wrote something.  It didn’t seem fair to anyone to proceed with any major operation before discussing that.  The chaplain asked him whether was willing to live and even gave him an opportunity to make a profession of faith before proceeding further.  I am a bit skeptical about such discussions but he actually seemed genuine.  

We went ahead with the operation.  I did a tracheostomy (for breathing) and a gastrostomy (for feeding).  I wired back what was left of his jaw, removed what was left of his eye and repaired a small tear in the lining of the frontal lobe of his brain.  I sewed what was left of his face back together.  

Amazingly he is doing well.  We are a couple of weeks out.  He seems to be in pretty good spirits.  He gives me an enthusiastic “thumbs up” sign.  The tracheostomy is out and he is breathing fine.  He can handle his saliva.  He has learned to feed himself through the g-tube.  

He needs more surgery.  I need to figure out some way to get tissue into the top of his mouth. He will never speak properly or eat properly, but he’s alive.  Lots of questions remain.  If he was depressed before, how is he going to be like he is now? Will he try to do it again?  Did the contusion to the frontal lobe give him a sort of “lobotomy” effect?  I wish the best for him, but I wonder what his life will be like.  Despite it all, it feels like a miracle.  It feels like God really did call him, that he said, “Stop!  I’m not done with you yet.  Disfigured, broken, near dead you may be...but I still have some measure of grace for you.”  It’s not a funny sort of case, but it makes me laugh, or at least smile a bit.  It makes me happy to have my own part to play in the story.  

Warren