My ethnographic field research in the 80s lead me to my next research project, a history of coffee in Northwest Tanganyika (the colonial name for the mainland of Tanzania).  What’s most interesting about coffee in Buhaya (also known as Bukoba, for the capital of the region) is that coffee was grown on Haya farms for centuries  prior to the colonial era.  Coffee was harvested and cooked with spices to be served as a small gift to esteemed guests; indeed, it is still prepared this way today - if it isn’t all sold on the global coffee market.

The history of Haya coffee includes a range of important actors - from Haya farmers who grew it; to the Ganda kings who traded for it; to the French missionaries (the White Fathers) who sought to improve and expand production; to German colonial officials who tried to tax it; to Tanzanian and South Asian entrepreneurs who became powerful middlemen in the global sale of local coffee.  The results of this research were published in my book Sacred Trees, Bitter Harvests: Globalizing Coffee in Northwest Tanzania