Four of us decided to spend our last morning in Sipi Falls on a coffee tour. Most of the coffee tours I've heard about from working at Lamill in L.A. involve tours of some major plantations, huge farms with a lot of equipment. In Sipi, which is on the Eastern side of Uganda, next to Kenya and Mount Elgon, the tours are pretty much given by individual families, who show you how they make coffee for themselves. The whole process was delightfully simple. I won't go into all the details, but the most interesting part for me was the end of the process- instead of selling the raw beans to a cooperative, they roast them and then grind them in to a fine powder themselves. This powder is what they consume as instant coffee- it's pretty good when it's fresh of the fire, but not as much when I have to drink it out of a tin weeks after it's been ground. This is why Ugandan coffee does quite well outside of the country, where it is properly roasted and brewed the way I like it, but Ugandan coffee in Uganda is a bit disappointing.
After the coffee tour, we all headed back to Iganga for another week of work. Connor and Ali and I will all try to work nights in maternity- we'll see how that goes!
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