Andre has worked in coffee for over 40 years. He is one of the founding members of Dukunde Kawa Cooperative and remains active as a member – he even works at the cooperative in the off-season by providing support with maintenance and improvements outside of the harvest. His career in coffee started at an early age, when he left school at fifteen and began working the fields with his father. He eventually inherited a plot of land, which he planted with coffee.

Andre is an industrious coffee farmer and, over time, he gradually saved money and acquired more land and planted more trees. Part of these efforts were to meet the needs of his growing family (Andre has five children), and he used the income earned from coffee farming to pay for school fees, insurance, clothing and covering all the family’s needs.

Today, Andre owns over 3,000 coffee trees and produces around seven tonnes of coffee per season, making him one of Dukunde Kawa’s biggest producing members. His production has grown so much, he now employs eight workers during the harvest to help him with picking.

The team at Mbilima Washing Station take a huge amount of care in sorting and processing their coffee. They own their own dry mill which enables them to control quality all the way through to export.

Cherries are delivered to the washing station on the same day as they are picked and are inspected and sorted to ensure only the very ripest cherries are processed. They are then put into a floatation tank and sorted by weight (and any floaters removed) and pulped on the same day—almost always in the evening—using a mechanical pulper that divides the beans by weight (the heaviest usually being the best).

After pulping, the coffee is fermented overnight for around 12–18 hours and then graded again using floatation channels that sort the coffee by weight. The beans are then soaked for a further 24 hours before being moved toraised screens for ‘wet-sorting’ by hand. All water used during the processing comes from a natural spring with water from the mountains.

As with most washing stations in Rwanda, women do the majority of hand-sorting. This takes place in two stages—on the covered pre-drying tables and on the drying tables. Washed beans are moved from the wet fermentation tanks onto the pre-drying tables, where they are intensively sorted under shade for around six hours.

Next, the beans are moved onto the washing station’s extensive raised drying tables (‘African Beds’) for around two weeks, where they are sorted again for defects, turned regularly and protected from rain and the midday sun by covers, ensuring both even drying and the removal of any damaged ordefective beans. During this period, the coffee is also turned several times aday by hand to ensure the coffee dries evenly and consistently.