Injury, Floods and Barista Training

Well my second and third days were eventful too. I spent the morning at my hotel doing emails and catching up on South African matters. I was also contacted by the lady who boarded me onto Kenyan Airways telling me that she had found my hopper and is keeping it safe for me. I dont mean to be negative, but I cant imagine this happening in South Africa. I gave her my business card and she whatsapped me. Mind blown. 

I took a swim in the crystal clear pool in the middle of the hotel and had a light lunch. Ben Carlson was going to pick me up for a casual, friendly game of Ultimate (frisbee). On my second dive and catch I landed on granite-well it felt like it- and either tore my rotator cuff and did something to my collar bone. Not the most ideal outcome of our friendly game but anyway. I chatted to a medical lecturer on the field and he said that there was nothing much they could do in burundi anyway. I can lift it to the side a bit but thats about all. It shall make a interesting competition set.

We went to dinner and I got to meet one of Ben's colleagues Lauren who is doing some great things here with regards to sustainability on both the people and the land. It started raining just after we got home from dinner which was a relief after a humid day which will make durban feel like a airconed apartment. After medicating myself with some pain killers, anti-inflamitories and alcohol I woke up in the morning. mild rain that I experience the night before must have become pretty violent during my drug induced sleep. I watched the news of floods but I couldn't have imagined that it would have been that bad.

Lauren was supposed to go up to the farms but the road was closed, instead she accompanied me to try and find a ATM that accepted International Visa cards. Interbank is the only one here that seems to work, and only a handful of them are online and working. So after many failed attempts to get money I got some from Lauren and we were on route to Hotel Club Du Lac which is where the AFCA conference is going to be held. This is when I realised how bad the floods actually were.

The main traffic circle that we were going to use was jammed with traffic and nothing was moving. Ben's knew another route to the club which we tried, only to find that it was no better. The bridge had given way and collapsed into the flood waters below it. Lauren and I got on foot and negotiated a motor bike taxi driver to give us a two for one price of 1000BIF to get us across the water swept road which was ankle deep in the best parts and not so ankle deep in the other parts. He took us to the venue which is right by Lake Tanganyika. My word. It is something special to see a body of water that big. On the very far shore you can see the hills of the DRC and north of that the shores of Rwanda. On our way out I spotted a San Marco lever machine, Naturally I introduced myself as the SA Barista champ and asked him If I could make a coffee on it.

I have never been much of a San Marco person, but a lever is a special thing. It was magnificent. It had the ugly (IMHO) bodywork of a series 95 san marco. But the essence and brute beauty of a lever machine. I have still had my best espresso's from a lever machine. The lever machine was made for the espresso, and the espresso for the lever machine. Ok, rant over. I subsequently met Jigga Christian who is the runner up at the Burundi Barista champs. I was seeing him later at the Burundi Barista Training which Francis, a Ugandan Barista that had been training these guys had organised.

After another well pulled espresso we started our 1km walk back to the river swept section of the road. This time we crossed by foot, dodging cars, bikes, people, taxis and trucks on a 2m wide section of road covered with water is quite an experience. Gascar, Ben's driver met us before the bridge and we walked back to the car and started our trip through town to the Silhouette cafe where I would do the training. 

I trained the top three Burundi Barista's, I had set out to do the same presentation that I had done on the 'There is no X in espresso' roadshow which I did around the country back in SA. Well that was the idea. But after realising that these guys have very limiting parts available and a limited amount of machinery that they had worked on I changed the training time drastically. I got right back to the nuts and bolts of espresso preparation and extraction. Teaching them about how heat exchanger machines worked and how to manipulate the temperature in the group head to attain different tastes in the coffee.

I was blown away by their dedication and passion for better coffee. They are not letting the machinery hold them back. Its so good to see. Burundi will be, I believe, a place of incredible depth and coffee passion in the future.