This natural processed lot is from Garashu washing station Winama in the shores of Lake Kivu. Garashu work with 1075 smallholders in the region, which is just a stone throw away from Nyangwe National Park - home to roughly 25% of Africa's primates and one of the best preserved mountains in Africa. 

It is managed by Valentin Kamenyi who grew up in rural Rwanda in the 90s, where coffee was said to have magical, mystical powers. 

The process

Ripe cherries are carefully selected by hand and then by floatation. Cherries are then dried on raised African beds for 30-40 days, weather dependant. Any defects are removed by hand during this period, and the beans are regularly turned to avoid over fermentation. Every day, a quality controller tests the humidity to ensure it's 12% , and then the coffee is bagged and stored in a cool and dry place before grading/hulling and sorting. 

History of coffee in Rwanda

The commercialization of coffee came about gradually in Rwanda and coffee was always produced on smallholder farms. Independence brought some improvement to the coffee infrastructure as the government established more modern and centralizing processing. But this meant the government set the price they would pay for coffee and farmers had no other options. There was no focus on quality because there was no incentive whatsoever. Despite much of the coffee being Bourbon, there was no sorting or grading so all the coffee was commercial grade. Rwanda exported 642,000 bags of coffee in 1993 and 447,000 in 1994. Then, as something of a stark reminder of the genocide, Rwanda exported a mere 22,000 bags in 1995. Today, Rwanda exports only 43% of what it did in 1993, but current exports represent much greater value because for the last 20 years the focus has been on quality rather than quantity. Rwanda’s ideal growing conditions are no longer wasted on poor processing.