Coffee from Kenya to Nigeria

Anyone who knows me well knows that one of the things I enjoy most in life is a good cup of coffee. The comfort in holding a warm mug with both hands, the soothing sense as it warms me up from the outside in and inside out. I look forward to my coffee everyday no matter where I am, but I don’t think I really learned the depth of my love until I began traveling in Africa, where a good cup of coffee has been, more often than not, a luxury and... a refuge.

In Kenya, despite the fact that the country produces some of the world’s best coffee, a typical cup of coffee for me was whole milk (often directly from the cow outside my door) and Nescafe. Nescafe is a coffee powder you mix into your milk and, to me, is like swallowing dirt. In Kenya I learned to despise Nescafe.

To this day my 5 months in Kenya remain the most life changing. I don’t know if I will ever have it in me again to live in such impoverished conditions or so deeply experience the disparities that exist in this world. Sometimes it would be so challenging I would cry, while other times I would shut down completely. Occassionaly I needed to escape, if only for a moment, and find refuge in something familiar. A nearby restaurant/coffee shop was my only external place of refuge during those months. My girlfriends and I would gather around a table with our fresh, high quality, cups of Kenyan coffee and process. I had to walk 45 minutes through the slum to get there, but I am pretty sure I would have climbed a mountain to get to that warm mug. With my girlfriends or with my journal, that cup of coffee would either bring me back down to earth if I felt a total loss of control, or it would lift my spirits up away from the realities that were sometimes too much to bear.

After a whirlwind of change in my life, a good cup of coffee in South Africa would remind me that no matter how much transforms into the unknown, some things will always be a constant. Without a coffee maker in the house, Nescafe was again the only type of coffee readily available. Thankfully, I can smell good coffee from a mile away and it did not take long for me to find the nearby coffee shops.

In South Africa I learned how to accept living in a more comfortable environment again and recognized that I could do so and still be of service. It was, perhaps, in South Africa that I learned that if I really wanted to make a difference I need to also take care of myself, and I probably need to live with certain comforts in order to do so. Kenya was an experience of digging up truths, unknowns, fears, realities, disparities, etc. South Africa was an experience of learning how to live with what had come to the surface constructively. The battles I fought in my mind while trying to find this balance were sometimes so difficult I did not want to get out of bed. A strong cup of coffee frequently pulled at my senses and motivated me to grab my journal and walk down the street to the restaurant that served my favorite cup. Coffee in hand, I filled pages with my thoughts and had some of the most meaningful conversations. In not much time at all many of the memories from those months faded away, but moments in the coffee shop remain vivid. Those memories remind me that no matter how much change or how difficult it is to balance change, if I take it upon myself to search for it – I can find a good cup of coffee and my notebook and pen will be there to help me get through the hard times.

In Kenya and South Africa I learned the issues, the theory, the needs, and the language of development. I also learned that I would go to extreme measures to find a sense of peace in a cup of coffee.

In Uganda I learned how to work in international development at a grassroots organizational level. I had volunteered before, taught, planted, built etc., but I had never learned how to lead, manage, and address the structural challenges of an organization. In Gulu I would drink the oh so delicious Nescafe on the balcony of the hotel and think about my next step whether it was how to engage the students I was leading, how to appropriately express my frustrations with the organization I was working for, or how to restart a community based program with very little support and even less experience to draw from. More than once, my first stop when I returned to Kampala from the north was... the coffee shop. There I would sit and write for hours and go through multiple cups and kinds of coffee. I would write emails home, blog entries, work plans, reports, and recommendations on what needed to be done within the organization. In Uganda I learned how to sit in coffee shops for days on end and well into the night in order to really flesh out the situation, articulate problems and try to identify solutions. In Uganda, I relied on coffee to keep me going. I didn’t have to work quite as hard to get it, but without it I am not sure what I would have done.

Nearly 5 years since my first trip to Africa, I write now from my hotel room in Nigeria with an empty pot of coffee next to my computer. In Kenya I had to push through garbage and begging children to get to my cup of coffee. Here, in Abuja, I can have it delivered to my room. An observer of my past 5 years may look at me sitting in this fancy hotel room with a queen size bed and wireless internet and think "success". I worked my way from the bottom up. I do feel I have made significant progress in my career in international development and I am privileged to have this job. I have a cup of coffee when I wake up in the morning, I have freshly brewed cups of coffee all day at the office and, if I wanted, I could drink it up until I go to bed.

Here I sit, with my coffee, looking out my window into the darkness of Abuja – the city where I have experienced what it might be like to live abroad as an expatriate. Beautiful apartments in gated compounds with swimming pools, live-in cooks and cleaners, drivers to take you from here to there, and (as far as I have seen) limited interaction with Nigerians who do not have money or connections (that is a very limited judgment, but a judgment nonetheless). Of course, you have to be safe and there aren’t too many ways to do that. Of course, if I were to live abroad long term I would want to be comfortable too. Of course, if I lived here I would meet and hang out with fellow expatriates.

However, as I look out the window I can feel something pulling me from beyond the city limits. I close my eyes and imagine that I am sitting under the stars in Takaungu...helping my homestay mother pick coffee beans on the hillside...talking about HIV/AIDS with children in a rural school... I am grateful for this experience and I love that I can drink cup upon cup of coffee – which is especially comforting on a Saturday night all alone in my hotel. But I know what I already knew…as much as I love my coffee…I enjoy it more when it is my refuge...I want to have to work harder and walk farther to get to that luxury.