Coffee Ladies of Addis Abeba

The Coffee Ladies of Addis Abeba

These pictures were made..

..at the end of the ECAFE GOLD 2006..

..competition.These first pictures were..

..made at the beginning of the shift..

..and I was told that -due to the work load-..

..the ladies often work in three shifts.

The same ladies are also responsible for the..

..picking and sorting of all ECAFE coffee lots.

The export warehouse has 674 ladies...

..all ladies are sitting along side..

..belt conveyors that move the green beans..

..from one end to the other..

..while the beans pass by them..

..they sort out manually some of the..

..beans that have imperfections..

..which can be broken, chipped, black,..

..insect damaged or discolored beans..

..the end result is a clean looking preparation..

..of the green coffee beans..

and coffee from Ethiopia -especially washed..

..coffee, generally looks very clean!

The conveyor belt stops in intervals..

..the ladies are very concentrated..

..on their work and some of them might..

..seem shy with the lens of the camera pointed..

..at them. I asked all ladies for their..

..permission. About one third didn’t want..

..their picture taken. The ladies who collaborated..

..were often shy initially..

..but when I asked them to look at the..

..camera, they generally relaxed..

..and when I finally smiled at them..

..they would smile back.

Picking coffee is done all over the world..

..and in some countries you can order..

..”double” or “triple” picked beans.

The Ethiopian Grade 1 coffees are..

..quite rare since this grade only allows..

..0 to 3 defects per 300 grams of green..

..coffee beans and that is very little!

Imagine, regular commercial export..

..beans from a country like Colombia..

..can have up to 23 full defects per 300 grams..

..so it takes a lot of effort and concentration..

..to prepare such clean coffee.

I was personally so impressed..

..by the warm expressions..

..of these women. You can tell that..

..each of their expressions tells..

..a story by itself.

The wages these women make..

..belong to the lowest I have heard..

..in Ethiopia. These coffee picking..

..ladies make about half a US dollar per day..

..which is about the same wage..

..a migrant coffee picker can make..

..in other African countries.

When I made these pictures, the manager..

..gave me only 20 minutes..

..and I must have made..

..at least 300 photographs.

In Addis Abeba I found a digital print shop (!)

..where I printed all pictures, which we..

..presented the next day to the ladies.