Mukago
We are kin.
omukago (n.) · the Buganda friendship pact
Among the people of Buganda, two friends who chose to become kin would take a single coffee bean, break it in half, and each swallow their piece. No scribe, no seal. Just a promise. They called it omukago. The pact.
We still keep it. We grow our half in Kayunga. You choose yours, wherever in the world you are. Same bean, same old promise.
Why Mukago exists.
This story starts with my grandmother, who raised me until I was nine, in a village called Kafunta, twenty minutes from where I now grow coffee myself. She grew coffee too, and when it was ready each year, men rode round on bicycles to buy it as kiboko, the dried whole cherry farmers sell before anyone hulls it. They paid whatever they liked, not because they were cruel, but because they needed their own margin too, and nobody had ever built her a way to ask for more. What she did get never lasted long. Those trees are still standing. My aunt tends them now. The same thing still happens to her.
She was not unlucky. She was ordinary. Real costs exist all along the chain, and none of that is the problem. The problem is what is left once they are paid: still pennies to the grower, still pounds to everyone after her. Not stolen. Just never proven.
Mukago is what happens when the farmer refuses to let go of the bean. I grow it, dry it, ship it, and sell it to you myself, so I see every real cost and know exactly what is fair.
We need profit too, enough to survive and keep planting. But fair value comes first, ahead of a bigger number for us. Our caretaker and the growers who join us later get paid what we agree before the coffee changes hands. You get an honest one, the same coffee and the same story, every time.
A relationship that only survives when the price is generous was never a relationship at all.
How we work.
We grow it ourselves first. Every bag starts on our own plot in Kangulumira, picked, dried, and shipped by us, because the chain only stays honest if the farmer never lets go of the bean.
We pick ripe cherry only, and take the time to wash and dry it properly. Nothing is rushed to make a shipping date.
Every batch is dated and numbered, so you always know exactly which harvest is in your bag, good years and thin ones both.
What we promise.
The grower gets paid first, and paid fairly. Every time. That is not a value statement. It is the whole reason this exists.
No bicycle buyer's arithmetic, ever, not even once we are big enough that cutting that corner would be easy.
We tell you the truth about the harvest. If it was a hard year, we will say so.
Who we work with.
Right now, it is just us: a caretaker on our own plot in Kangulumira, who shares in every harvest.
Soon, neighbouring growers in Kayunga join us, paid on the terms above, agreed before the coffee changes hands.
Be one of our first fifty.
Every pact needs witnesses. Leave your email and you'll watch this farm grow from planting day, and when the first harvest comes, Batch 001 is yours before anyone else knows we exist.
A few emails a year as the farm grows. First refusal on Batch 001. Nothing else.