Interview
What is your name?
Habonimana Ernest
How old are you?
48 years old.
How many children do you have?
I have 4 children.
How is living like in this area?
We farm. We live because we farm a lot.
When did you start farming coffee?
I started to cultivate coffee when I was young. 30 years ago.
Why did you start farming coffee?
Coffee is very important for us. We grow it and we get money to live in life. Because of the coffee we are able to support ourselves in life.
How big is you land?
It has an average size, it is not very small. Like 0,01 hectare.
How many coffee trees do you have?
We have 50 or more. The other side where I want to bring you, there are almost 150 trees. That is another land I have.
Which things in life bring you joy?
What makes me happy in life is working.
What do you like about coffee farming?
In this work of cultivating coffee, when a person sells it he gets money to support himself. People use the money to pay for his expenses.
What are some of the main challenges you have in coffee farming?
In cultivating coffee it is very difficult to get grasses. The grasses are needed to put in the lands. And to put pesticides on the trees is another difficulty we face.
What are some things in life that changed since you started coffee farming?
Since I started cultivating coffee, nothing significant changed. We work for the coffee, but the payment is very very small.
What are your hopes/dreams for the future?
In the future we would like you who represent us to plead for us, so that the price of the coffee will increase like the other crops. Because for the other crops that we cultivate, the prices increased. When you evaluate coffee, the prices do not increase in the way it should. So please help us with that. We don’t stop, we will continue to work. Like beans prices increased, so also the prices for coffee should. That is my wish.
In 2023 Ernest contributed 253kg of coffee cherries to Migoti’s Masenga lot. In 2022 he contributed 265kg.
What are the grasses referred to by coffee farmers?
During dry season, farmers cut and dry long grasses, which they then put around their trees for the purpose of mulching (covering land to reduce weeds and help soil retain moisture).
Location
Images (9 Files)
Ernest Habonimana can be used for content around any of the coffees produced from the 