Kilimanjaro Coffee Hike

This past Sunday, 5 other volunteers and I went on a coffee plantation hike on Mt. Kilimanjaro. It was so fun and so cheap – only $25! Our guide, Oscar, was born and raised on the mountain and his family has grown coffee for generations. Oscar is only 23 and the youngest son in his family. He took us to his family home where we met his sisters and nieces and nephews (they were adorable!) and he took us on a tour of the coffee trees on his property. We made coffee with no electricity and totally from scratch! We picked the beans which look like berries, cranked them through a machine to get the shell off, washed them, dried them, pounded them to get the skin off (like peanut skin), sifted them, roasted them, pounded them into powder, boiled them in water and voila! It took well over an hour but it was a really cool experience and it was the best coffee I’ve ever had. To make things even better, Oscar had never heard of Starbucks. It’s a beautiful day in the world when you meet someone who has never heard of Starbucks! After coffee and lunch we hiked from Oscar’s house down through the mountain where there is an amazing waterfall. It was over 300 ft. high! The hike was so beautiful – you could see forever off of the side of the mountain and as we were hiking back we passed by a funeral where people were singing hymns in perfect harmony. It was a very cool moment. Apparently I don’t work my butt muscles too much though because I was very sore when I woke up Monday morning! I’m going to have to take up hiking when I get home – I’ve never hiked so much as I have since coming here and it’s a really good workout! It’s probably not as cool to hike in Maryland as it is in Africa but I’m willing to give it a try. Before we headed back down the mountain, Oscar thought it would be fun to stop off and try Banana Beer. It’s a Tanzanian specialty and is much nastier than it sounds! Basically, people brew it by themselves from fermented bananas and finger millet. You drink it the day it’s brewed and to make things worse they serve it by taking an old dirty(ish) bucket and dunking it in an even bigger, older, and dirtier bucket. I don’t really know how to describe it except that it’s sour and grainy from the millet. There are huge chunks of it floating around. It kind of looks like and has the consistency of cream of wheat with the flavor of old, stale, sweet beer - I’ll just leave it at that.