Story1 min read
We planned for thirty. Sixty-one came.
A report from the first three days of the counselling initiative: who arrived, what the roadmap looks like in practice, and the one thing we had underestimated.
Story
Dative, and the drying table
Aimable Mugabo, Founder1 min read
Why a raised drying table is the highest-return thing we have put into a farming household this year, and what it did to one widow’s coffee price.
Dative farms half a hectare on a slope outside her village. She has farmed it alone since 2019, and she is raising four grandchildren on what it produces.
Last season she lost most of the value of her coffee crop to the ground it was dried on. Beans dried on bare earth pick up moisture and grit; the cooperative grades them down, and the price follows. She knew this. She did not have a drying table.
What changed
A raised drying table costs less than most people outside Rwanda would guess, and it is the single highest-return thing we have put into a farming household this year. Dative's crop graded higher this season than it has since her husband died.
She has since shown two neighbours how to build one.
Why we keep reporting numbers like this
It is tempting to write about a hundred households. But a hundred households is not a thing anybody can picture, and Dative's drying table is. We would rather tell you what happened to one person, accurately, than round up.
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More from the field
Announcement1 min read
Working alongside ENABLE Rwanda
Two organisations had been arriving at the same households from opposite directions. Here is what we have agreed to do about it.
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