My Coffee Trees

At Mweya in Burundi, I was in charge of the community fruit orchard.  We had fruit of all kinds, but I wanted coffee trees.  BIG mistake.

Coffee trees are planted in deep holes prepared with cow manure and left to rot for months.  That done, I finally went to the "Agronome" and got a supply of coffee seedlings.

Africans use a thorn-type plant as a hedge around gardens. [Funny thing about this plant.  It is milky and has sharp points. If  some of  that juice gets into an eye, it is very painful.  The only antidote, my gardener told me, is to flush it with milk produced by the mother of a baby girl!]

A nearby village had some of those plants, so after some prodding, Leroy took the truck to get a load.  There was no road and the hillsides were terraced.  He had a world of trouble and I was to blame.  I just asked him to help me remember exactly what happened and he said he didn't remember.  I thought he would never forget that!  He got so disgusted with me  that I baled out and walked home.  By the time his mission was accomplished, I had baked a cherry pie.  I was trying to make him forget  the whole affair and I guess it did.

After a couple of years my trees produced a small basket of coffee beans.  Then we moved and my  successor did not share my aspirations; nevertheless, the government sent inspectors to see that the trees were maintained.  It was illegal to cut down a coffee tree.  The last I heard, my name was not held in high esteem whenever coffee trees were mentioned.  GL