Coffee Factory and Goroka Museum

The highlight of last week was a tour of a coffee processing plant and a trip to the Goroka museum. The coffee processing plant is pretty amazing! They process tons (literally) of coffee every day. The place is very noisy and there are pieces of coffee hull (husk, whatever you call it) falling on you all the time. At the plant they dry the coffee, take the hull off and sort it according to quality or grade. The dryers alone hold six tons of coffee each. After all that, they sell it to exporters who then have it roasted and sent overseas.

The museum was also very interesting to me, despite its size. It was very small, but it was clean and had a nice display of PNG artifacts, history, etc. I just finished reading a book on the history of PNG, so seeing so much stuff in the museum that the book had talked about was fascinating. I would have liked to spend some more time there, but the rest of the group was getting hungry.

Graduation

Last Wednesday we had the opportunity of going to and helping with the Numanohi Christian Academy high school graduation. Many of the kids' family members showed up from around the world and of course the kids were so excited to graduate. Matt was the official photographer and I coordinated the coffee at the reception. Needless to say we have no end of pictures of the graduation, which was very nice. Serving coffee, on the other hand, provided a bit more excitement than I was hoping for... The outlet next to the coffee serving table quit working at some point during the graduation. Fortunately the coffee stayed fairly hot on its own. Also, the other coffee pots that we traded the original one out with were plugged into outlets that worked. All in all, I think everything turned out fairly well.

Coffee Festival

Every year Goroka has a coffee festival. It is a cross between a trade show and a cultural event. The local businesses all have booths where they advertise and sell their products. Because it is the coffee festival and coffee is big business around here, there is a lot of focus on the coffee industry. You can usually see coffee at every stage, from seedlings to the fully processed bean.

The other part of the Coffee Festival is all the cultural exhibitions. The local groups come dressed in traditional costume and do their traditional songs and dances. You can also buy artifacts such as baskets, wood carvings, paintings, bilums (string bags), etc.

I enjoy the coffee festival more than the other events they have in Goroka because it is more focused on the local people and not on the tourists. This makes it less crowded and more interesting to me. This was my last chance to go before leaving PNG. Matt always takes so many good pictures that it was hard for me to pick just a few to post.