Disaster Hits Nepal

Once again, Nepal is in shock.

Many of you will have seen the terrible footage of the flash flood disaster in central Nepal last week. As the volume of meltwater increases in our changing climate, it seems that a sudden glacial collapse precipitated a truly cataclysmic surge of water, ice, mud and rock along the steep Trishula river valley. Many hundreds of lives have been lost as well as ten percent of the electricity production of the whole country, so vital to the national economy.

We mourn with the people of Nepal.

Just how this disaster will affect daily life here in Pokhara, together with Black Kite Coffee, is yet to be seen. So far, things seem relatively normal but, along with the unpredictability of the Strait of Hormuz closures, we pray that cooking gas will still be available here in the months ahead: the last few months have seen severe shortages and some have resorted to cooking on open wood fires.

However, there is still some good news amongst the loss.

Thanks to the generosity of Passion Ventures, and no small amount of hard work by Jug (Varsha’s husband), we now have fully operational coffee processing machinery (including a specially built metal chaff collector). 

A smaller de-hulling machine removes the dry outer husk of ‘parchment’ coffee, whilst the impressive sorting machine grades around 150kg of the resultant ‘green’ beans per hour: plenty for our current needs and future growth. This has been one of the few times that I have seen Jug, usually very relaxed and calm, really express great joy and excitement! He has definitely caught the vision of a long-term family coffee business.

Now that we can buy cheaper unprocessed coffee beans, we are well-placed to be competitive in the rapidly expanding Nepali coffee market: the more successful we are, the more lives we can impact.

Next time….meet our next two trainees!