Going to Gorongosa

By Michelle Fish

You’ll never believe it, Mom & Dad. But you actually can get a good day’s work done by sitting on the couch and watching TV.

A few years ago, Bob and I were sitting on our couch, dogs sprawled out around us, watching 60 Minutes on CBS. They were doing a story on Greg Carr, an American entrepreneur and philanthropist who, in 2004, had pledged $100 million to help restore Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park.

Once, the park had been home to one of the largest and most diverse wildlife populations on the planet. But a fifteen-year long civil war from 1977 to 1992 had taken its toll both on the animals, and on the people who live there.

Gorongosa was ground zero for much of the fiercest fighting. It’s estimated that about a million people were killed in the conflict. Critical infrastructure like hospitals, roads, and schools were destroyed. And when it was over, the landscape was left littered with landmines.

The animals also suffered catastrophic losses. Both sides slaughtered countless elephants for their tusks to fund the purchase of arms. And soldiers and community members, alike, hunted the park’s mammals for food, almost to the point of extinction.

By the time the peace accords were signed in 1992, the animal count had plunged 95%. And Gorongosa mountain, whose rivers are an important source for the park’s main watershed, had been severely deforested by slash and burn agriculture. Life in the communities that remained was bleak.

But Greg Carr had a plan. He understood that to restore the park for the animals, you had to first focus on the people, and their lives in the communities in the park’s buffer zones. The Greg Carr Foundation entered into a 20-year partnership with the Mozambiquan Government, that was just renewed this year.

Their first goal was to create economic opportunities that could transform lives in those buffer communities, and the environment itself. And they were going to do it with coffee.

That got our full attention.

Sofia Molina

Bob looked up the Gorongosa Park Project on the internet and fired off an email. And a few days later, we found ourselves on a zoom call with Sofia Molina. She is a spit-fire Honduran, with a long background in coffee. And she was in charge of Gorongosa Products, the division of the park responsible for building a marketplace for coffee, and all of the other industries they were nurturing in buffer zone communities, like cashew nuts and honey.

Actually, when it came to coffee, they were building more than just a marketplace. They were starting from scratch, building a culture of coffee from the ground up.

Coffee

Mozambique is a perfect place to grow coffee. It is near the equator, between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. Parts of it are at elevation, at more than 2,000 feet. And those parts have the ideal temperature range of between 60 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. It gets, on average, 70 to 80 inches of rainfall a year. And all its neighbors (Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Tanzania) have long histories of being  successful coffee producing countries.

But there was no coffee production in Mozambique. Why? Because it is a former colony of Portugal. And Portugal already had a colony that produced coffee: Brazil, which grows about 40% of the world’s crop. They didn’t need to do it in Mozambique.

And because there was no history of coffee production, there was literally no awareness of coffee either. There’s no coffee culture in the country. Few people drink it. And certainly, the people who lived in the buffer zones around Gorongosa Park had never heard of it.

A coffee nursery in Gorongosa

Not to mention that it takes at least 4 years from the time you plant a seedling to when you’ll get your first commercial crop. And it requires a great deal of training and work in the field. And a whole new category of infrastructure, all of which had to be created from scratch, to process and export the crop once you’ve picked it.

Plus, it’s an under-story crop. That’s precisely why coffee was such a vital part of the project. It was intended to be the engine of reforestation on Gorongosa Mountain.

But it also means that if you’re a farmer that has slashed and burned the forest away on your land to plant subsistence crops, someone has to convince you to replant trees so that you can grow a crop you’ve never heard of, and maybe get paid four years later.

That is a tough sell. And that is what Sofia Molina, and the rest of her team at Gorongosa, were up to.

What Sofia Told Us

By the time we talked to Sofia, Gorongosa had been in the coffee business for just under a decade. They had approximately 1,000 small holder farmers, with an average of about an acre each, spread out in different regions of the mountain. And they were recruiting new farmers to the project all the time.

They were producing about one container a year of exportable coffee. But they were having a hard time finding a marketplace. They had a partnership with Nespresso for several years, while they were developing their crop. And Nespresso had provided equipment and expertise to help them get their cupping lab and roasting facilities up and running. But they weren’t producing a lot of coffee. And Nespresso was only willing to pay C-Contract prices, which wouldn’t be enough to cover the costs of production.

They were doing incredible work, building schools, hospitals, and human capacity. And they were restoring a ravaged landscape in a dramatic fashion. But they needed to sell their coffee at a fair price to keep it all going.

We knew we had to go.

Our team in the back of a land cruiser on the way up the mountain

Getting There

We put together a trip for July of 2023. Our team included Wana Chipoya, our Farm-Direct partner from Zambia; Nathan Havey, our cinematographer; Heather Zink from the BIGGBY home office, Kim Zahnow, our photographer; and Rich Schaafsma, our partner at Paramount Roasters.

First, we had to fly to Beira, Mozambique’s port city on the Indian Ocean. And from there, we took a charter flight to Gorongosa Park. As we approached the runway, we could see motorcycles zipping around the landing strip, chasing off the warthogs and baboons that were sunning themselves on the open patch of grass.

And from there, it was another bumpy two-hour ride in the back of land cruiser with Sofia, and Juliasse, the Gorongosa Coffee Project’s field supervisor for the Canda region of Mount Gorongosa.  

Human Capital

Our first stop on the mountain was to a school, one of 89 schools that the Gorongosa Project, in partnership with the Mozambiquan Government, has opened in the remote villages throughout the buffer zone surrounding the park.

Sofia estimated that around 75% of the regional population is under the age of 15. Until the Gorongosa Project, very few schools destroyed in the civil war had been rebuilt. Understanding that access to education is one of the first pillars of human development, there has been a strong push to create programs and curriculum that is tailored to improve life in the buffer zones.

There is, of course, a focus on the basics: reading, writing, and arithmetic. And play: a chance for children to be children. We saw books, puzzles, and games that would be familiar to school kids around the world.

But they have also added a strong focus on environmental issues. They are teaching these kids to understand how very special Gorongosa park is, with its teeming wildlife and unique biodiversity. Their aim is to inspire the next generation of scientists, guides, agricultural technicians, and conservation workers.

As the area’s largest single employer, Gorongosa Park has created jobs for more than 1,600 full-time and seasonal workers. It is, by far, the largest economic engine in region. And their goal is to hire and train as many people from the buffer communities as possible.

And they want to make sure that girls are not left behind. As is true in so many developing parts of the world where coffee grows, it can be especially challenging to keep girls in school.

Girl’s Clubs

Girls face numerous barriers to education, including economic challenges, cultural norms, and domestic responsibilities. Factors such as early marriage, lack of access to appropriate sanitary facilities during menstruation, and school-related violence further compound these issues, leading to lower attendance and higher dropout rates.

Their answer has been the creation of more than 120 Girl’s Clubs across the buffer zones, for girls aged 10 to 16 years old. Monday through Friday, for two hours a day after school, they focus on mentoring these young women, teaching them about their rights, their opportunities, and how to keep themselves safe and on track.

 In a cultural setting in which girls have very few role models of life outside of their traditional roles, the Girl’s Club members get to meet and our mentored by women working in a variety of disciplines through the park.

We had the opportunity to observe and participate in a singing circle. Their motto, which each of them proudly shouted out, full voice, is “Ready to preserve the environment, and keeping girls in school!”  There was so much laughter, so much joy, and most importantly, so much hope in the faces of these children. Hope, coupled with opportunity, is a powerful combination.

Working in and for the Environment

Our next stop was at a technical station on the way up the mountain. There, they were nearing completion on a new wet mill to help improve processing for the coffee cherries. They’ve been trying to negotiate with a neighbor who has a stream on his property for access to water to process the coffee. But trust takes time, and not everyone in the buffer communities is yet convinced that the park is a worthy partner. Julius was making the preparations to drill a bore hole, just in case.

The site is also home to a nursery for the native trees that they are planting to reforest the mountain. To date, the Gorongosa Project has planted more than 300,000 thousand trees (and counting), completely reimagining the landscape.

Before the project began, the climate on Mount Gorongosa was changing. Deforestation of the tropical rainforest had reduced the humidity levels, which in turn, affected cloud formation and reduced rainfall. Which, in turn, was drying up the river, reducing the flow of water into the park itself. That was threatening habitat for hippos, alligators, and countless species of birds in the park, not to mention the large mammals that graze on the plains created in the watershed.

On the mountain, many kinds of animals, including a tiny lizard called the endemic Gorongosa pygmy chameleon, whose only habitat is this mountain, were in danger of becoming extinct.

The project began with a demonstration/test pilot plot of 5 hectares (about 12 acres) in 2015. It was used as both a proof of concept that coffee could grow, and as a teaching opportunity for would-be coffee farmers. It had been a wild success. And over the intervening decade, as more of the mountain got reforested, the climate began to right itself. And the little chameleon was once again spotted in the newly sprouted forest.

All of this was made possible by coffee.

Fatianca on the right

Three Women

Or should I say, it was made possible by coffee, and by courage.

At our third stop, a drying station, we met women tending their coffee cherries on the drying beds in the sun. Juliasse pointed out one of the women, Fatianca and told me her story.

In 2013, as the Project was busily growing coffee seedlings in the field nurseries to ready them for planting, the ghost of the civil war was waking up.

After the peace accords were signed in 1992, the combatants for both sides returned to the countryside to live. Many of the former rebels were scattered in the Mount Gorongosa border communities. And, as dissatisfaction with government policies grew, the violence erupted again.

The conflict in the area became so “hot” that the Gorongosa Project had to pull all of their staff off the mountain. The project was stopped in its tracks, leaving thousands of seedlings and all kinds of equipment behind. And there was only the vague hope that they would be able to one day return.

Those seedlings needed water daily. And they would have died, but for the courage of Fatianca, and two of her friends.

In spite of the very real danger of being killed, raped, or maimed, the three women snuck out in the darkness to secretly water the plants. They did this every night for 14 months. And they did it in spite of the fact that they had never grown coffee before.

They had no direct experience of coffee as a crop. And they were going to have to wait at least four years before any of that coffee would produce enough cherries to have an economic impact. But they risked their lives for it anyway. Their hope about what it could mean exceeded their fear. And hope and opportunity is a powerful combination.

When the conflict was resolved and the Gorongosa team returned 14 months later, the seedlings were thriving. It was a like a miracle. And the project was able to move forward.

Fatianca became one of the Project’s first farmers, and she remains one of their best. In the time that she has been growing coffee, she has been able to save up money to buy a motorcycle for a taxi business that is now run by her son. She has achieved a kind of financial stability that was unthinkable before coffee.

FarmShare

As we walked the coffee fields, Sofia and Julius laid out some of the many, many challenges that they face. In addition to how complicated it is to work with with so many small land holders, each with different experiences, expectations, and knowledge about farming, they are also working to convince new ones to join the program all the time. Figuring out the logistics of payment is tough in a region without a reliable banking system. And helping to develop international markets for the crops they grow, like coffee and cashews, is a monumental task.

Wana Chipoya, our OBIIS representative in Africa, talking about shared experience with dealing with pests and diseases in coffee

One of the biggest issues they are facing, though, is pests. With the addition of coffee to the environment, the pests that plague coffee have also magically appeared, like the white stem borer that lays its eggs in cracks in the bark and can kill the tree over time.

The Project is constrained to attack these problems with non-pesticide means, both by their own desire to protect the environment, and at the insistence of their partner, the Government of Mozambique.

They are particularly vexed by antestia bugs, which attack all parts of the coffee tree, causing a significant reduction in yields, and leaving the cherries that remain with the vague, unpleasant taste of potatoes.

Fortunately, we happened to be travelling with a very well-trained coffee farmer from East Africa, our partner, Wana Chipoya. He had faced all of these same issues in his coffee fields in Zambia. And had successfully found organic remedies that actually work.

This is part of something that we, at OBIIS, call FarmShare. And it is powerful to watch as coffee farmers share information about real solutions to complex problems. Julius and Wana fell down a kind of rabbit hole of conversation. And by the time we left the fields that day, Julius and Sofia had a plan for next year’s crop.

We drove back to our hotel in town, ate a delicious meal of Peri-Peri chicken, a Mozambiquan specialty that I’ve been dreaming about ever since, and collapsed into bed.

Honey

We spent the next day at the dry-mill and honey processing plant, where we got the story and the “why” behind some of the choices the Project has made as they developed products to support the work of the park.

The small holder farmers that they work with used to grow primarily subsistence crops for their own consumption. They were transitioning them to think about growing things to sell including, of course, coffee. And with coffee, there is the opportunity for companion plants.

Farmers are encouraged to interplant their coffee with things like pineapples, banana, mango trees and other fruit. And cashew trees, too, make a lot of sense. They produce a cash crop, and they offer shade. Plus, they’re good for the soil in coffee country.

Apiculture, otherwise known as “farming” bees for their honey, is also a natural companion for pollination of all of the crops on the coffee field. And a great opportunity for communities to pool together for extra income.

But honey does more than that in Gorongosa.

Sofia told me about some of the problems they were having with the elephants in the park. Elephants have a very long memory. And they carry with them the scars from the time of the civil war. They are extremely aggressive towards humans and this has literally caused deaths for both sides.

The elephants, on occasion, will raid a village in the buffer zones. They will attack the people, and steal the food stores. Sometimes, people die in these attacks. And sometimes, the elephants die.

They needed to find a way to reduce these interactions. Although there are fences around the park, if you pit an elephant against a fence, my money is always going to be on the elephant.

African bees are known to be very aggressive. What does that have to do with the elephants?

They got the idea that if they placed noise makers on the fences around villages. And then, the put bee hives up at regular intervals between the noise makers. Now, when elephants attack the fence, it makes a huge racket. Not only does that alert the village, but it really ticks off the bees. The bees swarm, attacking the elephant’s ears. Elephants are afraid of bees. And, they usually make a hasty exit.

Then, in the final coup de grace, the villagers harvest and sell the honey.

It’s not a full-proof solution, and dangerous interactions still occur, but it has reduced the incidence significantly in a way that is protects and supports both the humans of the park, and the animals.

That is what Gorongosa is all about.

In the Safari truck with our guide, Test

The Animals

Our last day in Gorongosa we spent at the park. And although we don’t usually engage in things that would be described as “touristy” on our farm-direct trips, it seemed that we would be missing the point if we didn’t also explore the park, and see for ourselves the impact on the animals there.

We arranged for a sunset safari with our guide, Test, who is originally from the region and now works full-time at Gorongosa.

In our open safari vehicle, he took us through the backroads, and oh, what we saw. We came within 10 feet of a sleeping lion. We saw all manner of impala, waterbuck, nyala and greater kudu, leaping and bounding through the bush in their family groups. We saw hippos. I think I even saw a crocodile.

But the most majestic moment came as the sun was setting over the plan and the river. I could see for miles, and in every direction I looked, there were countless animals grazing and moving across the landscape. It was truly breathtaking.

And it is made possible, at least in part, by coffee.

There are many hurdles still to work out before we can strike a Farm-Direct relationship. For one thing, we usually forge our partnerships directly with farmers, not with organizations, whose leadership and values can shift over time. And we still have to figure out of the logistical steps of getting their coffee to us, and how we’d use it once we got it.

But looking out at that field of animals, thinking about the faces of the girls in their clubs, marvelling at the courage of Fatianca and her friends, it seemed to us that we might have found our next needle in the haystack. Gorongosa is completely rewriting the script for both people and the environment. And hope and opportunity are a powerful combination.

Coda

As it happens, we were there while a CNN film crew was working on a piece about Gorongosa’s coffee project. Bob and I were interviewed for it. You can watch it here.