Field Office

The Karaba Coffee Cooperative in Rwanda represents over 2000 families who work collectively to increase production and quality by pooling all of their coffee together for export. Ideal growing conditions and strict quality control consistently yield some of the most complex coffees in the world. One of the goals of this project was to spend one-on-one time with farmers and hear their concerns, outlooks, and hopes. Time and time again, needs were simple: better shelter, clothing, health-care for their families and if money permitted buy livestock. Coffee is without a doubt their salvation to a more dependable future.

Stumptown had tall orders for this piece – inspire, compel, educate, and challenge. We created a structure that does all of these we think. Threaded throughout, the farmers introduce themselves, their age, and their role in the cooperative while a group of coffee-carrying men work their way toward the weigh station to drop off their freshly picked coffee cherry. We want this to achieve two things: first, cement the cooperative not as a homogenous facade, but as individuals with a shared purpose, and second to display the unavoidably hard labor. This is intercut with all the various stages of coffee processing before it is exported: picking, transporting, washing, drying and sorting. We also hear from a farmer and a quality control expert, extolling their respective virtues. The piece concludes with a montage of striking images, notably a bittersweet image of a jubilant boy chasing our exiting car.