Taking another woman's husband to meet my mother

Ah well! This was truly interesting. Having completed the search for Ethical coffee mother dearest invited Tony for Sunday lunch.

Mother was nervous as she wasn't sure what to cook and I reassured her that Tony appears to eat anything.

Tony was nervous too, and asked a lot of questions, like what shall I wear, what shall I take your Mum, should I wear a jacket and before we got through the gate he asked if I was sure he was dressed appropriately for meeting your mother!

I reasure him that he had absolutely nothing to worry about, luckily he saw the funny side to his nervousness:-)

Sunday lunch has always been a big deal at home but the stakes appeared to have been raised on this occasion, in fact I can't remember whether mother got into such a fuss when I took Nigel to meet her for the first time.

It was a nice sunny afternoon and lunch was served in the garden. I got the chance to catch up with my cousins whom I had not seen for a while and Tony appeared to be having fun too and true to form he ate whatever was put infront of him. He got into a long discussion with one of my cousins and didn't appear to want to live!

Sadly we had two government officials to meet so we hit the road again. The last person we saw was the Managing Director of the Uganda Coffee Agency. We put our findings to him and asked him a few uneasy questions.

To be fair to him he answered our questions as honestly as he could and admitted that he was aware there were shortfalls in the system before asking us if we could help resolve them!

Having seen the state of some of the factories, this would be a tall order we said. We assured him that on the one hand what was required to turn things around was a simple case of hygiene and bean handling and on the other hand requires a complete overhaul of the factories.

We agreed to write a report with our recommendations upon our return to the UK and to explore ways in which we could help.

We hit the Road to Lake victoria with Fred who curently lives in Uganda until further notice. I don't know what it is but I absolutely love this place and a trip to Uganda is never quite completed until I have been to Munyonyo.

In search of ethical coffee- Are we there yet?

On the way back from Eastern Uganda we made a detour to a tea plantation. this was really interesting for me as I went to the Secondary School on the adjacent hill and we used to come jogging through the tea plantation every afternoon by way of practice.

Tony had never seen a tea plantation it was therefore a real treat for him. Our guide told us that the tea plantation was now owned by a Ugandan Asian. It was late afternoon and the tea pickers were out, we observed that there was a health centre and a school, within the grounds although the housing seemed a bit tired and slum like




We spent the following day on a coffee farm in a place called Bugerere, this was an upmarket set up with certification from UTZ
and later that afternoon we caught up with the Quality and Regulatory Manager at the Uganda Coffee Development Agency and he is pictured here with Tony


On Saturday we hit the road to western Ugandan and 6 hours later we were at Ankole Coffee Producers Cooperative Union. We were met by their Executive Secretary John Nuwagaba who run through the history of their co-op. He told us that the coop was fair trade certified and was part of Cafe Direct, where they currently hold 5% shares and are hoping to increasing these in the coming year.




Tony is pictured here left to right here Hassan our guide, the chairman of the Coop , John Nuwagaba

We were then told that the farms and factories were 16 KM off road so we headed in that direction and this is what we found

Something that we found puzzling was that co-op secretary informed us that they were working towards organic coffee production and had applied for and granted funding from Rabo bank in the Netherlands to pay a consultant Alan Tulip to teach them organic farming methods.

This co-op didn't look like it could afford artificial or chemical fertilizers of any sort and were already growing their coffee without chemicals! Why did they need to put the much needed funding into something they had no need for?

Please take a look at the state of their facilities below and you may well agree with me


Coffee bags inside the coffee factory were stored on bare ground as opposed to a raised platform to allow for ventilation


coffee beans on the floor, it was unclear whether these were discarded or awaiting packaging


and this what the exterior of the coffee factory looks like.

We found this visit really distressing, specifically because two high profile UK based organisations are involved in this factory/cooperative


Whilst writing this blog this article came out in The Times today.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/article6531246.ece
May I suggest to Cafe Direct that they should first and foremost aim to improve the conditions of the growers that are affiliated to their programmes. In addition they should seek to have Value Added to the coffee at the point of production.

That would be a much better proposition for the famers, the countries where the coffee is grown would collect more by way of revenue. Taking raw products and returning them as finished products for the farmers and local to consume is a tad patronising I think.

We found and brought back coffee produced and packaged in Eastern Uganda and it we have enjoyed it very much. Ultimately this what the growers want

Being in the wrong place at the right time or is it? part 3

I am glad I followed through my promise to send Adam and Tony Ugandan. Adam promptly got in touch and started asking a lot of questions about how I had come by this tea and how easy was it to get hold of other stuff from Uganda.

All this was by email being a curious so and so, I picked up the phone and asked why Adam wanted to know all this sort of information. It was at this point that he opened up to me. Like me he had Tony had turned up in Leicester and later in London with a view to meeting some Ugandan Asians. They wanted to start trading ethically and were already in talks with a company owned by a Uganda Asian whom they believed would help them “change” their ways however for some unknown reasons the person they had been in talks with stopped retuning their calls or emails and appeared to have dropped off the face of the earth.

They therefore wondered if I could help them through my contacts in Uganda and other African countries. This was late November 2008. I got as much information for them as I possibly could and I was suddenly hit by a feeling of “I am being used” I told them I would not provide further information from that point unless they were willing to pay for it as it was costing me money and time to find it.

They told me they didn’t have the sort of money I was asking and therefore were walking away. Something in me told me to look a little closer at this, so I asked them more questions about their intentions and with this information we were able to bring people that we each know from different walks of life and we had 3 hour meeting talking through the pros and cons of the idea.. the search for Ethical coffee had begun..

Being in the wrong place at the right time or is it? part 2

The visit to Leicester was interesting in many ways than one. First I got to meet the Ugandan Asians, most of them had been children when Idi Amin expelled the Asians from Uganda. Through the various conversations I learned that for most Uganda will always be home and indeed some were in the process of relocating there

During the question and answer session I was given the opportunity to discuss my work in SW Uganda. This was more than I had expected mainly because Uganda’s First lady is the MP for the district where my project is located and up until now I had not had the opportunity to speak to her about the project but here I was addressing both her and the President.

I also learned about an upcoming launch of a new network called UK Uganda Business and Professionals Association the following month. This meeting attracted most of the folk that were in Leicester as well those looking for investment opportunities in Uganda.

During a networking session I had a conversation with two chaps Tony and Adam who introduced themselves as coffee roasters from North London. I cheekily asked them whether they knew much about Ugandan tea and they challenged me to find them fine Uganda tea by way of shutting me up and I agreed!


One of the things I learned early on about networking is that the “fortune is in following up”. I asked my mother to send me some fine Ugandan tea via a friend who was in Uganda and when it arrived I sent it off to Tony and Adam.

Be back tomorrow with what happened next!