This post is by Alie Tawah ’11, a Health: Science, Society & Policy and Biology double-major.  Alie was a a Hiatt WOW Fellow who interned in Cameroon in July 2009.

It has been two years since I began my story of my experience in Cameroon. I gave an introduction then disappeared from this site and went on to live my life. Now things have changed. I finished my summer in Cameroon, went back to Brandeis for my junior year, studied abroad in Geneva, Switzerland the fall of 2010 and graduated in May 2011.

Reading over my previous entry, I realize that I did not do it justice.  My descriptions were very general and did not give a true personal look at what was going on at the time.  I did not describe the extreme heat that I felt as I landed in Douala, the country’s largest city located in the littoral province, because of the lack of air conditioning in around 90 degree Fahrenheit weather. I did not describe the joy I felt to be picked up from the airport by a cousin whom I was used to seeing at my house in the United States but looked a little different in her territory. I remember seeing the lush untouched forest green trees that covered the mountain tops as we drove a hour from the airport in Douala to Beau, a city in the south-west province, where I would be staying for the next few days until my father came to take me to Yaoundé, the capital of the nation located in the central province, where I would begin my two month internship.

Due to my lack of description and follow-up you never had the chance to get a glimpse of the mix innocence and purity of the people of the nation that lived in the cities I visited, or the mix of luxury and poverty that was evident as you drove through a neighborhood: next to very nice modern-looking mansions stood shacks made of plywood and tin coverings where families lived.  I did not describe the characters I met along the way that believed so much in their countrymen and the need for change that they spent their whole lives working with and around the corrupt system of the government to do what they could to improve the lives of the country’s citizens. I did not describe the mothers that worked tirelessly at their farms and in the market selling whatever produce they harvested to try a feed their young children. I did not describe the students I met at the university who were a few years older than me and very eager to learn but found themselves unable to do so with the limited resources at their university. Within this group I met one who dreamed of becoming a research scientist but knew that his school did not have the materials necessary to conduct experiments and there were very few centers in the country that did.

Looking back I realize that I was not being fair to the people I met along the way of the people who read my entry as I gave general overviews of everything as if I was a reference textbook. I hope that all of you take this as my apology and realize that I have learned this lesson.  The next time I choose to write such a blog I’ll be sure to paint the picture so you can have a glimpse of my true experience and hopefully give me a glimpse of yours.

Read Alie’s previous posts: A Foreign Homeland and Healthcare in Cameroon.

Zach Cohen ’09 was an International and Global Studies major at Brandeis.  He works for the international non-profit TechnoServe in East Africa.

Zach at an annual cooperative general assembly in Tanzania.

Before jumping into the details of my East African adventure, I would like to give you a background of the company, TechnoServe (TNS), I worked for while there. TNS is a non-profit organization that works in many developing countries across the globe with the aim of finding business solutions to poverty. Entrepreneurism and sustainability are central to finding these solutions. The specific project that I worked on was the Coffee Initiative, which seeks to help smallholder farmer cooperatives enhance the quality of their coffee through improved processing methods, higher production, and market linkages.

Throughout my almost two years working for TNS, I performed various activities. My first task was to collect and analyze costs of production data from each of the countries in which the Coffee Initiative has a presence – Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. This information was valuable for a number of reasons. By understanding the industry benchmark in each country, TNS would be able to quantify the impact of its work with the cooperatives and determine which specific areas of operation are strong and which are weak. Much of my time spent on this task consisted of going out to the field and interviewing farmer cooperatives in each country.  As you may imagine, this type of work, at times, forced me out of my comfort zone and ultimately provided me with experiences that will forever have a positive impact on me. One thing that I promised the many people that I encountered along my journey was that I would share the experiences with people back home.

Zach in a meeting with a coffee farmer cooperative in Kenya.

Given that I was most recently in Ethiopia, I will go ahead and share some of my observations from there.  Let me start by debunking the common misconception that Ethiopia is an arid desert. In fact, Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee and has some of the highest quality coffee on the planet. It is a country with a very rich culture in food, coffee, and religion.

Ethiopian food is certainly unique, and I encourage anyone who hasn’t tried it to give it a shot. The first lesson in Ethiopian food culture is that you must always wash your hands before eating. Of course, this seems a common theme with any dining experience in any part of the world, but Ethiopians are particularly strict about it. Why? Because Ethiopian food is eaten exclusively with your hands. No matter what you order, your food will come served on a platter with what would appear to any outsider as a rather large, thin sponge resembling a pizza pie with no cheese or sauce. This is a bitter, very absorbent bread called injera that serves as your spoon, fork, and knife. On it goes any number of culinary delights ranging from tibs, pieces of meat cooked with spices, onions, and peppers, to beyaynetu, an array of vegetable dishes served on fasting days.

A coffee tree

As I mentioned before, Ethiopia is among the most highly regarded coffee origins in the world. Obviously, the inherent climate, altitude, and soil conditions are the primary reasons for this. But, ironically, the lack of development of the coffee sector in Ethiopia contributes to its superiority in quality. Due to a lack of large scale processing infrastructure, Ethiopian coffee production is dominated by smallholder farmers. When you have hundreds of smallholder coffee farmers pooling together their coffee at one cooperative, the blend of flavors creates unique coffee profiles that appeal to the most discerning of buyers. By linking these cooperatives to buyers in the US, Europe, and Japan, TNS helps these smallholders fetch significantly higher sales prices than they would have received otherwise. What we are seeing is that the quality of this coffee is high enough to motivate buyers to form sustainable business relationships with these cooperatives so that TNS can remove itself as the facilitator.

While what I shared was brief and incomplete, I hope that I have exposed you to something that is new and different, and that you carry this over to explore some more on your own.