Saturday, May 21, 2011

Cherry pickin'





It's coffee season once again in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.  Coffee is a huge source of income here and the villagers are kept busy going to their coffee gardens and picking the ripe coffee "cherries." 

 

you fill bags with the picked cherries...or in my case you attempt to fill up bags.  I worked for hours and only got about 1/2 a bag.  No wonder coffee is so expensive.



the coffee cherries are then shelled to get 2 coffee beans inside.  These beans are then dried on huge tarps in the sun.  You can always tell it's coffee season by the stench of rotting coffee skins everywhere.  The dried coffee beans are then sold to factories in town that roast the beans and seperate them into grades to be packaged, sold and exported.


Kuela and I had just finished picking coffee for several hours and were taking a breather after lugging it (in the bags on our heads...PNG style) up from the garden.

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