Our Story

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In 2011, my family and I returned to Burundi for the first time after many years. Burundi was recovering from a long civil war a lot more desolate than I remembered it. Returning to the village where both my parents were born was particularly saddening. My late grandparents' modest farms were almost abandoned and in disrepair.  

 

Growing up, my brothers and I spent many summers in the village. Coming from overseas, the Buyogoma Region in the east of the country seemed like the end of the world. One could only get there on a dirt road. There was no plumbing and no electricity. Very young I felt spending a month there was boring. But with time I developed a deep emotional attachment to the area. It became a place that I always want to return to.

 

Seeing the desolate state of the farms, my brother, cousins, and I started with small projects to revitalize the farms. We replanted bananas, bought a few cows for manure and pruned and mulched the coffee trees. We wanted to honor our grandparents’memory by caring for what had been their livelihood. Also, we wanted to help the family that lives there.

 

Soon we got more ambitious. We started dreaming. Was there land to buy and put to good use? Were there products we could bring to the market? Coffee was the short answer, the crop that allowed our grandparents to get a little cash to send our parents to school.

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Burundi has excellent conditions to grow coffee. We decided to develop our coffee and sell it to the world. Through coffee, we would bring better farming methods to the area and improve people's lives. Coffee will be the reason our children will visit the remote part of the world their parents come from.  

 

That’s how Birime Coffee that we named after the mountain chain that traverses the Buyogoma region started. We have bought hectares of land that was not being farmed. We learned about modern sustainable coffee farming. We started nurseries to grow coffee from the best bourbon seed we could get. We found agronomists to help set up the new plantations. We bought manure to fertilize the soil. We planted coffee, grass and shade trees. And along the way, we employed hundreds of people giving them means to support their families. (Visit Gallery and Videos to get an impression of what happened through the years.)

 

Birime Coffee has come a long way. Today, we have 15 ha of coffee planted and starting to harvest. But there is so much more that want to do. 

 

I invite you to follow our journey.

 

Calixte.

(Founder)