Petit á petit

Education, relationships and the road to impact.

It has taken me a long time to figure this out but once I stopped doing all the talking, I really started to hear what people were trying to say. I talk too much, I get excited, and when presented with new ideas and opportunities I find it difficult not to share my thoughts and opinions on the things I am incredibly passionate about. I often start a conversation with “Please stop me if I go off on a tangent” but most of the time people are just too polite to interject.

Communication is a vital part of any relationship but if you are the only one doing the talking you will ultimately miss the opportunity to understand what everyone in that relationship needs. This has got me thinking about impact.

What even is, impact, man?

What impact means and what it represents is a constant set of evolving principles. The word itself tends to conjure up a sense that we are creating objectives that are larger than ourselves with the aim of pushing society forward. I would say that Specialty coffee as an industry has this principle at its core but I often question, is our singular focus on quality really the only benchmark for providing equity?

Of course, we should be paying more for coffee, this is a given but, pinning our hopes on the single principle that “producing higher quality” will ultimately lead to prosperity for all in the value chain is somewhat of a misconception that needs to be addressed if we want to see a real impact from our transactions.

Working alongside people you believe will make a positive contribution and that share a desire to have an open dialogue and learn collectively, is fundamental to achieving real change. Understanding that we are one small part of a chain, that requires all actors to demonstrate their desire to consider everyone within it, regardless of quality, is surely the answer? Quality will come in time but, the commitment to educate ourselves and each other on the fundamentals of what everyone requires to achieve sustainability will by far outweigh the idea that this can be achieved through one singular focus.

My concept is pretty straightforward, I want to have a relationship with the people I buy coffee from. I want to understand what everyone needs from the relationship and I want to work with people who share the same approach and question what will keep the industry moving forward and equitable, even if this differs from my current ideas. I have had the pleasure of working with some incredible people in this industry and I want to learn how to do things better.

Engaging with others who share their ideas and experiences on how the industry can best serve the communities that operate within its complex framework is something we need to focus our attention on. We won’t get this right every time, but if we have the capacity to communicate openly and directly, we will hopefully learn collectively what works best over time. Collaboration is crucial for the future of coffee.

The objective is to share as much as we can whilst being mindful that our position can influence what we deem to be valuable. This is a responsibility we can not wear lightly and we need to invite more voices to the table if we want to achieve true impact.

Luke Walther of RWAMATAMU COFFEE LTD has kindly accepted my invitation to share his perspective on his coffee journey and has provided a beautiful piece that details what coffee means to him, his family and their future.

I know that you and Bernice will go on to achieve great things in Rwanda.

JAMES you are the glue that binds us all.

Luke, I am honoured.

Good luck.

Thank you.

Leonard Walther, Luke’s dad and an environmental scientist, teaches Elise, Rwamatamu’s agronomist, and Gaston Rutaganda about controlling wastewater pH.

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The first regular job I had was on a chicken farm in south-central Kentucky, United States. The second day at the farm, Miguel and I huddled shoulder-to-shoulder over a Spanish-English Dictionary. Word by word, page by page, he attempted to teach me to sort eggs. It was slow. Nearly ten years later, the situation is far funnier than it was then. Yet, the problem remains old as time—a language barrier interrupting agricultural trade. 

Nowadays, the language barrier is as familiar as my family—literally. Shortly after meeting my wife’s family, her mother started to teach me Kinyarwanda. Between Madame Laetitia’s fledgling English, and my broken French, we had a functional dialect. Meal time was class time for all languages. One particularly long meal, I hit the brick wall all-too familiar to speakers of unfamiliar languages—my brain stopped. I couldn’t continue to form full sentences. I sat across the beans and sweet potatoes from my future parents-in-law, mouth open, eyes searching the silverware for absent vocabulary, temporarily mute. Whatever conversation we were having came to a close as I floundered back to reality and gave the only French word left rattling around my skull, ‘Oui.’

Her parents chuckled knowingly. Monsieur Gaston, who typically abstained from the babble fest, offered some sage advice. “Petit á petit” —little by little. He continued, “Petit á petit, l’oisseau faire une nez.”  Little by little the bird builds a nest. 

Petit á petit has since become a motto for the work Bernice, my wife, and I have undertaken. Shortly after getting engaged, we agreed that in 5 years we would enter the coffee industry. 5 years seemed like enough time for us to learn the export market—in 5 years we could sell the family’s harvest, and a few years after that, move back to Rwanda to take over the farm. A few weeks thereafter, we had an enthralling conversation that turned into an informational interview with another coffee professional, and then another, and another. Before we knew it, we were selling the family’s harvest—5 years ahead of schedule.

That coffee landed in England this past January, 11 months after our initial conversation. With everything having happened so quickly, Bernice and I needed to reform our 5 year plans. We started dissecting the past year. While it was a hectic year, our success hadn’t happened by fluke. Quite frankly, the work of selling the coffee had begun many years prior. 

First and foremost, we were selling really, really, good coffee. The credit for the quality belongs to everyone in the business that has preceded us—the smallholders planting the trees, the agronomist nurturing the saplings, and the production manager checking moisture levels. Heck, we’re growing coffee in a region world-renowned for its rich volcanic soil—it’s an agricultural gold mine. However, selling the coffee was made possible by more than just the quality—our crucial contribution: education.

For years, Mr. & Mrs. Rutaganda invested in their most precious asset—the minds of their children. Consequently, Bernice spent a lifetime of translating contract negotiations, equipment advertisements, marketing, and educational seminars. Bernice was fluent in the coffee industry. Not only this, she was literally fluent in Kinyarwanda and English—crucial to closing the gap between the shrub and the mug. On my behalf, after growing up on a farm, I went in the opposite direction and got a business degree in entrepreneurship. I spent years starting new businesses, marketing emerging technologies, dissecting existing businesses, and understanding the flow of finances behind it all. Though the prospect of exporting a container of coffee was new to us, we both had the educational tools we needed to solve the problem in front of us.

Bernice and I are indebted to the opportunities education has afforded us. The only way to repay this debt is to spread it; we realized our business had an obligation to increase the expertise that has given us such incredible coffee. By doing this, we would be building the surrounding community in much the same way the education has built up our own family. 

Immediately, this looks like the coffee laboratory we are building. It’s bringing in experts—a quality control consultant from Colombia and Q-Grading professionals from England—to educate our staff about cupping and lot design. It’s about getting them the equipment they need to do their best job. And when the coffee is sold, it’s about rewarding them with the fruits of their expertise. 

Looking back, I am immensely grateful for that summer job on the chicken farm. For the first time in my life, I was entirely unable to understand the person in front of me. It changed me. I realized I deeply wanted to learn about my world—I wanted to speak new languages and go new places. Little by little, that spark turned into a roaring blaze. I tried a little harder at school and got into a bit better of a university. When I met Bernice, I learned a little French, and opened the door to speaking with my mother in law. Next thing I knew, we sold 19 tonnes of green coffee. And I’m living a long way away from the chicken farm. 

Bernice and I are not doing anything revolutionary. In fact, we’re just taking the next little step in the legacy of Mr. and Mrs. Rutaganda. Petit á petit we intend on modeling pride in our craft. We want to show there are careers in agriculture. There is opportunity. There are new horizons that have yet to be discovered. 

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Bernice Rutaganda and Luke Walther are shareholders in Rwamatamu Coffee LTD. Green coffee from their family’s washing station can be purchased through Omwani coffee Co.