On my visit to Burundi this year, I sat with Dan Brose of Migoti Coffee. Dan and his partner Poncien built this station some years ago, and it all didn’t go exactly as planned. With some bumps along the way, this main station in Mutambu district is becoming a hub, with a new station starting in Kimono and another planned for next year.

But what I really appreciate is Dan’s deep experience in Burundi, and how his background in chemical engineering and other work informs the Migoti approach to coffee. And though I find Dan eloquent and with vast experience, the words you see him repeat over and over are teamwork, partnership and community. Taking a look at Migoti’s instagram and you will scroll a long time before you find a picture of Dan. The emphasis is on the work, on the group effort, and the goal of building a sustainable business that builds up the local community. With Migoti these are not a heap of buzzwords … they are how they operate. It’s a real pleasure to speak with Dan at the main station, and you will hear birds, people picking coffee in the background, and later the rush of water as they start the flow through the coffee washing channels. This is not a slick recording in any sense! In fact there are zero edits after the first minute. I encourage you to stay with this conversation because I feel the best stuff comes at the end!

-Tom

You can see all our podcast episodes listed on our Coffee Library page.

This recording is a 28 minute unedited recording of a morning in Moshi, Tanzania May 25 2023. It’s the kind of “waking up” recordings I often do when traveling, both as personal note taking, but sometimes the material I turn into podcasts. This time, I thought I would also upload it to youtube, with images and video clips. So on youtube there’s some added visual information, but it’s not synced to the recording. Images and vocal do not match. But of course they are all from the same trip to Tanzania. Here is the You tube link to hear / view this with images.

This is the second part of of a podcast recording, focusing on tourism coffee and coffee marketing. I read from the article Tourism: Globalization and the Commodification of Culture about Disneyfication, and McDonaldization, read a text from a Starbucks bag about coffee travel adventures through an Indiana Jones / colonial adventurer lens, listen to Dangerous Grounds tv show promo reel that infuses coffee travel with xenophobia, and connect it to the current way roasters talk about coffee buying more as a social mission than something they do so they have a product to sell. The latest approach includes incredible claims like “Kevin [coffee buyer] discovered that small scale poor farmers produced some of the most complex and incredible coffees in the world, yet they had no experience of what was happening to their work thousands of miles away or its tremendous value and appreciation by specialty coffee drinkers.” Poor coffee farmers! Here comes Kevin to save you!

So what’s the answer? I don’t have one but it would hurt to kick it down a notch, and just try to learn when you travel. Would it?