Cards from Africa-Lunch at Serena and RwaCof!

One of my favorite places to show visitors is Cards from Africa!

So, of course, I had to take the girls there!  This day actually happend before we visited Innocent's family.

We had already gone through the parts of the company that
made the paper from recycled materials.  And here they
are cleaning the glass that they dye the paper on.  

These containers are all full of different colors
of dry powder dyes.  

Orange is the color of this dye.
And this is what happens when the
white paper is dipped in it. 

We then made our way into the 1st room where they were
making the cards.

Each little piece is glued onto the card and layered
to make each picture.

Each colored piece was cut and then the
designs/patterns are glued together. 

Each person creates their own card.
This girl was so happy to have her
picture taken. 

 This guy was proud of his work, too!

We shopped for cards for quite awhile
and then decided we should head for lunch.
This was a special day so we headed for the Serena.... 

                        They gave us a great seat by the pool.

We had a delicious lunch and time to relax....
before we headed off for our tour of
RWA COF.
This is the coffee plant where they process
the coffee beans before sending them off to
be roasted somewhere else in the world.

In the beginning... seeing how the beans are cleaned.

And what is left from it.   

Checking out the driers...

The sorting process by color of the beans.

 Checking out the best beans...

Lots and lots of coffee beans before shipment.

And then the best part of the tour... We walked into this room where there were hundreds of women sorting the leftover coffee beans.  I missed the picture... But we walked in and waved and I said "Les Femmes" and put my arms in the air demonstrating strength...and ALL the ladies went crazy... waving at us and shouting back and laughing... It was wonderful...
This was Nelda's favorite part of their trip.

Each has their own pile of beans to sort. 

Mounds of beans and rows of women.. What a sight!
Oh, I just realized that you might think that the mounds of stuff 
between them is gravel.. but it isn't.  Those are the beans... 
When then are cleaned and dried they appear different shades of grey and tan...  
Coffee beans don't get dark brown until they are roasted.  
That might seem obvious... but just wanted to clarify.

Can you imagine going through these piles, bean by bean?
Look at all the beans behind each row of women.

The Coffee Testing Room was waiting for us. 

Nelda tried the slurping to see if the
coffee beans have consistent quality.
She's really into this! Mmmmmm....

The Chief, Amy and Kristi all slurping together--
and then spitting.

What a system....for determining great coffee!

So from creative cards to coffee beans it was
another full day of learning about
things and how they work in Rwanda.

love,
margie