At a coffee washing station in Burundi, smallholders carry the day’s harvest—often on foot—and wait for sorting and weighing. A field account from Rwanda and Burundi describes farmers chatting in line while staff work through the night to sort, weigh and process their cherries.
The crop is not yet a sale when fieldwork ends. Only after passing through the order of weighing and quality checks does one farmer’s delivery join the station’s larger lot.