This coffee comes to us from a washing station called Bwenda, located in the Nyamagabe district of Rwanda. While the washing station is privately owned by Bernand Uwitje, its close ties to and support of its local community is crucial to its viability.

Bernard Uwitje grew up on a coffee farm and had experience in non-washed, home processed coffees. With an interest in building a business in the coffee industry and ambitions to help his community, he invested in his first washing station to process fully washed coffees in 2015. Over the course of the first year of operation, he learned all the processes involved in effectively running a washing station and opened two more for operation in nearby communities over consecutive years. Bwenda Washing Station was his third, beginning operation in 2019.

Bernard opened Bwenda when he learned that the farmers living in this remote area didn’t have close access to a washing station to sell their cherries, meaning farmers would need to spend a long time traveling each day to find a buyer for their pickings.

Today, these local farmers bring their ripe coffee cherries to Bwenda instead, which are pre-sorted and then de-pulped on a disk pulper before being fermented in large tanks overnight. From here, the coffee is washed to remove the fruit flesh that surrounds the beans, before it’s graded in channels and dried on raised beds.

Bernard’s washing stations are involved with many community initiatives focused on supporting the farmers that supply them. Over his three washing stations, Bernard works with more than 5,000 farmers, primarily made up of vulnerable groups – poor families, single women, and genocide survivors. A percentage of profits each year are returned to farmers through Farmer Field Schools, supplying materials and training, health insurance, small loans, paying school fees and providing support to local schools.

This is our first year buying from Bwenda, having been connected with them by Rwanda Trading Company.