Brett, Bonifas, Richard and I went to Boana over the weekend. A mountain village in a nearby district (3 hrs away). Our Rural Economic Development (RED) project is working there and has assisted the community in becoming a registered Cooperative Society Limited. They sold their first load of green beans for export last week. Previously they had only sold the parchment to a middleman. Now they’ve networked with a factory in Lae, paid for the parchment to be made to green bean and then made a connection with an exporter. The coffee will then go overseas and be bought by different roasting companies. 
We went walking around the mountains yesterday, tasted some of the best mandarins, bathed in some rapids. In the late afternoon we went to see the villages natural gas pockets at work - they had put a paint tin upside down on one and you can light it and heat up a kettle. It started to pour and I realised that the plant that mum used to grow when I was 6 that she called and umbrella plant was probably actually used for just that! The children grabbed me a big taro leaf and we all went running back to the village with our green umbrellas overhead. Last night I sat in on a meeting with the cooperative society members and our RED coordinator - Bonifas. For anyone who knows how interested I am in coffee and fair trade would realise how much of a wonderful process this is for me to be witnessing and be a part of!
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