Kainamui Factory is situated in the Ngariama region of the Gichugu Division of Kirinyaga County. It was established in 1963, on the slopes of Mount Kenya. It has 2,000 members, 1,200 of whom are men and 800 who are women. These producers have very small farms, with an average of only 200 trees each. Members handpick their coffee and deliver it to the wet mill for pulping. There, the flotation system separates dense beans from immature ‘mbuni’s (floaters), letting the denser beans sink and the heavier ones flow through channels to the fermentation tank. This first stage of fermentation lasts about 24 hours, after which the beans are washed and sent to the secondary fermentation tank for 12-24 hours. Once fermentation is complete, the beans enter the washing channels where floaters are separated further and the dense beans cleaned of mucilage. The washed beans then enter soaking tanks where they sit under clean water for another 24 hours. This soaking process allows amino acids and proteins in the cellular structure of each bean to develop, resulting in more acidity and complex fruit flavors—a quality that distinctively identifies Kenyan coffee.
The Ngariama region has a long chain of mountains that help provide a diversity of altitudes and terrain for coffee cultivation. While this could seem like an obstacle to access (as in Peru where the presence of Andes means getting to a farm can take 7+ hours by road), in Ngariama the farms are only about a 30 minute trail walk (1-2 km) from the Kainamui washing station. Only in the rainy season does access become complex as mud makes these unpaved trails challenging to navigate. The predominant population of Ngariama community are the Kikuyu, the oldest native population in the area. Everyone in the area also speaks Kikuyu. The farms here are mostly very small (1-2 hectares) and adults work the farms while children attend school all day. Schools here cost money, which unfortunately limits access to education and future opportunities in this mostly-poor area. Due to lack of opportunity, much of the young population is migrating en masse to cities in search of better jobs, leaving their parents alone on the farms or even taking their parents and abandoning their farms. This problem gets worse each year.
