The Okapa Connection
The coffee growers of the Okapa region of Papua New Guinea are among the more than 100 million people of the world who depend on coffee for their livelihood. In September 2005 I visited this region as part of an ongoing documentary about the world of coffee.
Although coffee is the worlds most popular drink (after water) and one of its most traded commodities, most of us coffee drinkers know little or nothing about its origins, or the lives of the people who grow it.
Friday, 9 June 2006
The Okapa Connection
The Okapa Connection brings these two very different worlds together, to fill in one of the unseen gaps of our globalized world.
RIGHT Mount Saruwared, Kabwum
The Okapa connection is about the people, the landscape and the coffee of the Okapa district of PNG. It follows the journey of a container of coffee from bush to brew, and reveals the efforts taken by many people to produce a fine cup.
RIGHT picking coffee near Ivingoi, PNG
The coffee of Okapa, (also known as Purosa Coffee) comes from one of the most remote parts of PNG. As such many of the people who grow it live on what they grow and what they earn from coffee.
The Highlands Organic Agricultural Co-Operative (HOAC) has recently be been formed by the growers. With Fair Trade as well as Organic certification, HOAC is beginning to deliver community benefits to coffee growers as well as better prices.
HOAC is part owner of Coffee Connections. Together they produce, transport, market and sell the Okapa Coffee. to many parts of the world. It is now well established as a Fair Trade specialty coffee in Europe and Japan, and is gaining popularity in Australia.
RIGHT Drying coffee in Ivingoi, PNG
Being remote and isolated, people can walk several days to sell their coffee, which is carryed in white poly bags. The sight of white bags bobbing through the forests inspired the name ‘white horses’ for these people and their coffee bags.
BELOW and RIGHT ‘white horses’ carry bags of coffee to buying depots.
ABOVE Iso Panya, transports coffee through the slush of an Okapa road.
LEFT Sorting out the imperfections at Coffee Connections factory in Goroka.
RIGHT. The Cape Delfaro loads the Okapa coffee. This shipment is destined for H A Bennett in Melbourne. One of their buyers is Jasper Coffee, the largest roaster of Fair trade coffee in Melbourne.
Coffee Cherries near Ivingoi, PNG
Festival Screenings
COMING
Aotearoa Environmental Film Festival
Sunday September 17, 2006
PAST
Melbourne Underground Film Festival
July 2006
