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- Uganda

The search for ethical coffee begun in earnest on 31 March 2009, at the Headquarters of OTTIMO Cafe in Tottenham North London.

There were two sides in the "pot" so to say. The charity Let Them Help Themselves out of Poverty and OTTIMO

The charity works on various community projects in Uganda and relies heavily on the generosity of friends and volunteers, however this is not sustainable especially in the current economic environment.

On the other hand OTTIMO wanted to improve its Corporate Social Responsibility and had been frustrated with the existing models of helping African farmers.

It was therefore agreed that Charity would sell its expertise of working with communities in Uganda in particular to OTTIMO and that OTTIMO would share some of their profits with the charity to enable it to continue its work in Uganda, with specific emphasis on communities in the coffee growing regions

The next step was to travel to Uganda. It was agreed early on that this was a necessary step in the discussions. It would help us understand how the coffee industry in Uganda operates, enable us to meet the growers and establish a working relationship with them, as well as get a clear understanding on doing business in Uganda.

So it was that on 12 May we hit the road to Uganda in search of ethical coffee. In next blog I will write about the coffee trail, and post some photos from the trip