Storytelling the coffee journeys is how Vava enriches the taste of her coffee alongside the lives of the Kenyan farmers she has an intimate relationship with. She is a social entrepreneur, who exports globally but invests locally.

It is a synergy that not only ensures the quality of coffee is top-notch, but that there is progress in the industry, which favours the producers as much as it favours the entrepreneur, and mother nature.

Before I got a chance to enjoy Vava’s coffee, I first enjoyed reading the stories and seeing the captivating images of her and the farmers, and the coffee. I placed my first order, and on the packaging was a story of the farmer whose beans I would be enjoying. Two things happened at this point: one is I felt I was an aware consumer- I knew how my product was made, where and by whom. Two: drinking my coffee was not a matter of getting myself caffeinated and ready to start my day, but an intimate experience that involved a burst of flavours, which I had already anticipated from the story. Afterall, what makes something an experience, to me, is the ability to reflect back on it and be able to tell a story.

While Vava was telling the story of coffee I felt we ought to hear her story too. Not only does she run a business where she has to be a tough cookie to go with the coffee, but she is also herself the brand – something we will get to know more about in the sequel.

“Storytelling is an easy way of educating people, and people are more moved by stories,” she explains. When she first got into coffee, she realised it was an industry shrouded in so much secrecy. Vava found it difficult to get the information she needed; to the extent that she could not do her Masters thesis on coffee in Kenya.

Combining the stories with photography allows her audience to have a better understanding of what coffee means “to us” she says, as a people. To her, the world often lacks genuine voices in the products we create and consume. With all the noise in the world: traffic, social media, phones and emails constantly buzzing, a robotic way of going through the day, there is a hunger for personal connections.

“People think of me as a city girl but I am in the village quite a bit. My partner initiated a lot of the relationships we have with the farmers as she grew up in Kirinyaga*. Our relationship with the farmers is very personal,” Vava emphasises.

While her partner deals more with farmer outreach programmes, Vava- being the brand- handles all the PR and marketing of the small enterprise (on its way to medium).

THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY

“You should either be really good or really bad to be remembered, you can’t be an inbetweener,” Vava said in jest, when talking of how being a female go-getter has been at times perceived as being arrogant or overconfident. On a more serious note, Vava discovered a character one has to breed to survive entrepreneurship. “If I don’t go out and boldly put myself out there – this is my story, people, listen, I want to be the next leading social enterprise in Coffee, in the world, nobody will come to you,” she said.

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME

“My dad raised us to believe that the world owes us nothing.” Vava had a very military-like childhood where she and her siblings had to do things to the very best of their ability in a scheduled manner. “I remember he made me do 100 math sums on a daily basis. We therefore had less time for play compared to other children.” Luckily, this impacted positively on Vava, because she learnt to be tough enough to manage a business and learnt how to be present for opportunities. But the conformist childhood made her, in other ways, rebel against it- failure to which Vava Coffee would never have existed. Her mother expected her to get into formal employment, get a great job, a great husband and lovely toddlers – what in her mother’s times may have been considered the perfect life for a woman. Yet, her late father, who was a successful banker and economist, did not want his children’s lives to be wholly determined by employment – advice she was the only one in the family to have taken literally. Vava has never been in employment, with the exception of the intermediate period of her life, when she lectured at a local university.
Telling her mother, who was a teacher and later a banker, that she was going to do business, right after completing her Masters, caused friction in their relationship.

DISRUPTING THE INDUSTRY

This is what gets Vava up in the morning. “When you find things not working properly, particularly sustainability – a farmer earning $250 a year for their coffee, someone has to do something radical,” she said. If someone created Mpesa, can Vava create CoffeePesa?

Vava recently got nominated to sit on the Speciality Coffee Association Advisory Committee, where she feels she will have a significant platform to speak for the small-holder farmers.
She will sit on the developmental and events committee and assist in the education part of it.
According to Vava, the growing young voices in the industry, as herself, can positively influence the policies that determine sustainability in the industry, if given the opportunity.
“Now, with a Kenyan representing the interests of producers in Africa, the government may become more open to listening to some of the younger voices coming up, like myself.”

In the interview with Vava, many tangents came out of the discussion, that it was best to make this a series. Stay tuned for PART TWO AND THREE to know more on what happens to your coffee before it gets to your cup, and where we will explore the culture of coffee and how Vava goes about being the brand.

See more of Vava’s stories and throw in an order on www.vavacoffeeinc.com

*Kirinyaga is an agricultural county of the former Central Province of Kenya

byawoman is a blog dedicated to enriching our lives and experiences by the stories we share. If you enjoyed meeting Vava you read PART TWO here. Follow, like, share, comment 🙂