So the last 2 days have been pretty uneventful for the most part. After catching something of a tummy bug, either from the water or the food. I have been pretty much hotel bound for since tuesday night.
I ended up waking up pretty early on tuesday with stomach pain, which is quite a nice change actually, normally it is shoulder pain. I always find change quite refreshing:). Anyways, I took some medication for pain and had some toilet time- to avoid me continuing to use the word toilet, or find something funny to say to draw your minds away from the actual actions happening I am going to codename toilet or anything related to it 'Houston' as in we have a problem Houston.
So, after Houston had taken its course, I went back to bed. I eventually woke up at 2pm and went down for breakfast. Do you know how difficult it is to order off a menu that is pretty much exclusively in French, I ordered a 'Chef Salad' with another what looked like a avocado salad so that I could add some avocado to my chef salad. Well, my 'chef' salad arrived first with what was most probably the half of Burundi's avocado export on a bed of lettuce and onion, I assumed that they knew what I wanted to do and did it for me. Before I could tuck into my meal, my other plate with my second salad arrived, the avocado one. This time with a football sized avocado sliced in half and filled with some white stuff. Smile and wave boys, smile and wave. In other words, there was no point in saying more than thanks to the waitress I was english only person scenario.
After lunch I went to Houston and then to bed for another four hours. I got woken up by Ben Carlson on the phone who asked me to come downstairs. I met him downstairs and and he introduced me to Nathan, from Cartel Roasters in Australia, a short guy( coming from me) Sam, a Ethiopian coffee trader that lives in the US now. And another US guy, who's name has eluded me, he has a roastery in the US and had worked for La Marzocco for a number of years. We went out to sit by the lake (Tanganyika) and drink a beer. The local beer here is Primus, It comes in flipping huge bottles, probably 700ml+. Pretty good, buy I only had half a glass. I went home with Ben early as I had pretty big fevers and cold spells. The next day was the planned farm and washing station visit which I didn't want to miss.
Farm visits were not meant to be, Houston and I were still not friends and I didn't feel confident to go up country without my close friend Houston and I also had to get better for the Barista Comp later in the week. So I reluctantly passed on the trip to see the legendary Long Miles Coffee Project. Before Ben and the other roasters left I had a chance of tasting a Natural processed Burundi from Counter Culture in the US which reset my awe of African coffees, this was tasted like raspberry juice, it was so bloody good i could not believe it. I cant wait for Burundi to rise to its glory. People need to taste how good this stuff is.
People left and I had a taxi driver asking for me, I then found out that I had to be at the conference venue. Organisation or lack of organisation is quite different in Africa, you have to be in earshot of the decision to be informed of it, times change at the drop of a hat, and a coffee machine arrival at 8am does not actually mean that, it just means that it will arrive.
I got to the lake side conference venue, found my way to someone who told me to go see someone else, who directed me to Andrea Simonelli, the guy from La Marzocco. Funny right, So Simonelli makes La Marzocco........... Andrea is a really cool 26 year old after sales guy at Marzocco. We got chatting while we waited for the machine to arrive. If you can believe it, we pretty much ran dry after about 6 hours and then finally, the machinery came. a brand spanking new Linea, and two Mazzer Super Jolly grinders, also new, which worries me somewhat because of the unseasoned burrs.
After meeting the Barista's there, The Uganda competitors seem to be the biggest competitors in the field. Godfrey from Uganda has been to the worlds and the other competitor from Uganda Mark Okota has also competed in the worlds before so it will be quite a tough competition I think.
Anyway, Houston and I are no longer close friends, which I think is good. And I am feeling pretty good about competing, aside from the occasional panic attack.
Much love
Craig
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