Kim Cook

COFFEE: Gombe: Coffee and Chimps

The Kalinzi Region of Tanzania borders Gombe National Park, the home of the infamous Jane Goodall's Chimp Reserve. In 2007, The Jane Goodall Institute partnered with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to support local farmers practice sustainable agriculture and increase their income. With this initiative, JGI hopes to stop deforestation and increase the range for chimps to enlarge their communities.

   
  
     
  
Gombe National Park rests directly behind this mountain top and clearcutting stops at its borders.
   
The people of Kalinzi and its neighboring villages share the same concerns of water, transportation and medicine shortages.
   
     
  
Transportation is scarce. The bus runs only twice a week to the nearest city, Kigoma.
   
With little transportation available, most farmers rise early and walk to their farming plots scattered along mountainsides.
   
Locals illegally cut down large trees for firewood. This day, a band of men cut down, sawed, and distributed a very large tree within thirty minutes.
     
  
Access to water is difficult. In some villages, drinking water is a twenty mile round trip.
   
Local women returning home from a long trek for water thru coffee farms.
   
Fetching water is the responsibility of everyone.
     
  
Regional Kalinzi Farmers gather at the co-op to hear the good news of new machinery and agricultural training.
   
Local co-op officers discuss the distribution of new machinery.
   
     
  
Green Mountain Coffee buyer examines Jafarx's coffee crop. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters partnered with JGI in helping farmers boost their income thru improved coffee production.
   
  
Annette and her husband harvested bananas to make ends meet. But now they have planted coffee to supplement their yearly income of seventy dollars.
     
  
Catalina, a local farmer, is seventy years old. She is responsible for sending her grand children to school by farming her dead husband's coffee farm.
  
Coffee Farmer Yassini Saidi and his two wives prepare for their new crop.
   
Traditionally, Kalinzi coffee farmers pulp coffee by a hand crank shared by many. With the help of JGI, the region will receive several new automated pulpers to increase efficiency and improve quality.