South to Sidama!

Today (Feb 23) starts the second phase of this trip – we drive south to yirgalem, visit one cooperative mill, and see some sorting. Coffee is over, cherries are gone, milling is finished, only a little hand sorting is left. There are groups of women left doing this work. This is not the best time of year to be here to see picking and milling. Now is the best time to be here to cup rested coffees, which we’ll do on Friday. We see coffee in warehouses getting ready for either the ecx or for transport to Addis. Trabocca does a lot of double certified coffee, so those will bypass the ecx anyway, but there are other lots that people are afraid will be held up.

Just as I anticipated, the area is far different from the eastern part of Ethiopia. In the south there are rolling hills and actual mountainous areas, plus a lot more water. There are streams flowing through many areas and while pollution doee seem to be a pretty big problem, at least there is water to keep things green.

The farmers around here seem to know what they’re doing – maybe not as good agronomists as id like, but they seem to understand intercropping, rotation, a little conservation, and at least basic farming techniques to keep subsistence crops and make a little cash while they’re at it. People have been around this part of the world for a long time and have probably figured out a lot of how to get farming at least a little right. Everything seems to be in neat rows, and there are avocados, pineapples, bananas and false bananas, and timber – lots and lots of wood stacked up in areas. Deforestation has to be either a real problem here now or it will be very soon. There is very little chat in these areas – the demand isn’t there like it is in other parts of the country, so there doesn’t seem to be the pressure to replant coffee with this mild drug.

*interesting note – we are told there is some pressure to replant coffee with chat but that Ethiopians are afraid, since coffee is such an important part of these people’s cultural traditions or heritage, that replanting with chat loses them face – so they stick with coffee. Maybe, maybe not, but it’s a decent story.*

We sleep in an old college – tiny little dorm rooms, pretty sparse and minimalist, (and not just a little freaky, since they put us all in separate buildings!) though I experience the best night’s sleep of the whole trip so far – despite the midnight rousting – it sounded like there were a dozen women in high heels leading a shoed horse through the tiled halls. Malaria medication-induced dream, ghosts, or reality?