By Kendra Howard
Circling her newly sprouted coffee trees, 15-year-old Kerima Abrahim intently looks for bright red seeds to add to her bunch. “Red means it’s ripe,” she explains, “I learned that in training.”
It’s April in the coffee farming village of Chaffee Jenette, Ethiopia, and its inhabitants are preparing their coffee harvest, which most rely on to survive, for sale. Each new tree directly affects the community’s chance at a better quality life.
Kerima wasn’t always a coffee farmer. She once spent her days walking and cooking; rarely did she attend school. Instead, she would wake early in the morning to begin a nearly four-hour trek, carrying one or two large, bright yellow jerrycans, one atop her head and the other in hand, through hilly, rocky, makeshift paths to reach the nearest water source. After filling her containers, she would begin the long hike back.
“This year, I have produced five quintals (500kg) of coffee beans,” Kerima says, as she bends down to pluck a few more coffee cherries from their branches.
“Before the training, I used to harvest a maximum of just three quintals (300kg) so I am grateful for the additional income I earn from my coffee,” she adds. The training to which she refers comes from The Abyssinian Fund, a brainchild of Harlem’s historic Abyssinian Baptist Church, which was founded in part by Ethiopian sea merchants in 1808 and takes its name from ancient Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia).
During its 200th anniversary campaign: True to Our God, True to Our Native Land, launched in 2007, the church traveled to its ancestral homeland and emerged with a new commitment. Seizing the opportunity to reconnect the two worlds through coffee, which was discovered in Ethiopia, after that first visit, Abyssinian assistant minister Reverend Nicholas Richards founded the fund in May 2009.
“Americans consume more than $40 billion worth of coffee per year and a farmer in Chaffee Jenette survives on $10 per week. The Abyssinian Fund is closing that gap,” says Richards. In order for this small Ethiopian village to excel in the coffee business, Richards discovered that their farming techniques needed to be reevaluated and raised to match the standard of major coffee producers in Brazil and Chile. Guided by the expertise of several experienced field directors native to Chaffee Jenette, Richards dedicated the organization’s resources towards teaching farmers the necessary skills to generate an abundant crop.
In the inaugural 2010 class, Kerima and others learned how to choose optimal coffee seeds, properly water the plants and process the seeds using the “dry method,” widely used in Ethiopia; this gives the coffee its robust, sweet, berry-like taste. These skills are crucial because a more abundant crop can add a few extra days’ worth of food or even buy a family a donkey to help with transporting water. Like in the United States, coffee often brings people together. So Richards has farmers sign a contract promising that 10 percent of each coffee sale will go into water, education and health projects— the next phase in the Abyssinian Fund’s plans.
“This year we begin distributing Chaffee Jenette coffee,” Richards says. “With this step, we complete the full circle of development. The very thing that was once underutilized— coffee—will now be sold across America to support our farmers’ futures.” For more info or to donate, visit abyfund.org.