I am sitting in my hotel room exhausted after 17 hours of traveling from Oslo to Nairobi. Kenya is my first destination for this 2 week- long trip and the reason for going is to source coffee of course.
I am also travelling with my friend and colleague from Denmark, Mr. Peter Dupont, who will arrive tomorrow. Peter is the roaster and also manager at the Coffeecollective and we are trying to establish a cooperation together so that we can start a direct trade model with a cooperative or farm in Kenya. There are many reasons why we want to do this, but first and foremost working towards better quality of coffee and better quality of life for the farmers.
I will be visiting the Gatundu co- op where we bought coffee from last year (the best Kenyan coffee I have ever had) and hopefully the coffee is as good this year.
Pictures and reports will be posted hopefylly every day, but that all depends on wi-fi connections, etc.
Tomorrow morning I will be judging in the Kenyan Barista Competition. It has been 3 years since I was here last time and trained and judged baristas, so it will be exciting to see how the barista craft has developed in Kenya.
My second destination for this trip is a round trip in Ethiopia together with Joseph Brodsky from Ninetyplus coffee.
More about Ethiopia next week.
Tim W