Congo's Specialty Brews Look to Be the 'Future of Coffee'

Linda Mugaruka perched her nose above a steaming cup of coffee. Swilling and then spitting, she noted that it was clean and sweet with traces of fruit. On her clipboard she scrawled 94, a high score for a specialty coffee.

Mugaruka, 24, is one of a few cuppers, or coffee tasters, from the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the only wom an working as a cupper in the region. This spring, flanked by connoisseurs from South Korea and the United States, she stood over some of the most coveted cups of special ty coffee from her homeland at the nation’s fledgling annual coffee festival, held here in the eastern city of Bukavu.

琳達． 穆加魯卡將鼻子放在一杯冒着熱氣的咖啡上。 她喝了一大口再將它吐出。 她發現這咖啡清爽、甘甜且帶着果香。 她在筆記板上潦草寫下94，對精品咖啡算是高分。

24歲的穆加魯卡是來自剛果民主共和國東部的幾位咖啡杯測師（或稱咖啡品評師）之一，也是該地區唯一的女杯測師。 今年春天，剛果初創的年度咖啡節在東部布卡武市此間舉行，她在南韓、美國鑑賞家圍繞下，負責監督來自她的老家、最令人垂涎的幾杯精品咖啡的製作。

At the gathering, called the Saveur du Kivu, or Flavor of Kivu, cuppers sought to discover new flavors from a nation troubled by con flict and political instability, yet believed to be one of Africa’s most promising producers of specialty coffee, with the potential to be one of the world’s biggest producers of commercial-grade coffee as well.

Coffee was once Congo’s second-biggest export, after copper, contributing an estimated $164 million to the nation’s economic output in the 1980s. But during recent decades of conflict, exports dropped drastically.

在這項名爲「基伍風味」的聚會中，咖啡師試圖發現新風味。 剛果是個飽受衝突與政治不安困擾的國家，但據信也是非洲最有前途的精品咖啡生產國之一，而且具有成爲全球商業級咖啡最大生產國之一的潛力。

咖啡曾是剛果僅次於銅的第二大出口商品，1980年代曾對國家經濟產出貢獻約1.64億美元。 但近幾十年因衝突不斷，咖啡出口銳減。

Now, with millions of dollars in donor funding in recent years to build the coffee industry and help stabilize the region, coffee ex ports have steadily increased and farming cooperatives are attracting the attention of global buyers like Starbucks and the Israeli company Strauss. This is despite an overall economic crisis in Congo, political turmoil over President Joseph Kabila’s refusal to step down at the e nd of his term and violence including atrocities carried out by a government-linked militia that were cited by the United Nations.

During the first half of the 20th century, as the country was subjected to exploitative Belgian rule, extensive coffee plantations rolled through the green hills of eastern Congo. The country’s beans were roasted in coffee houses in Brussels and Rome, and its coffee was among the world’s finest.

The coffee industry was decimated after rebel groups marched through those fields in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the toppling of Congo’s long-standing dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, in 1997.

而如今，由於近幾年有數百萬美元捐助資金用於打造咖啡業與促進區域穩定，咖啡出口出現穩定成長，該國的農業合作社也開始吸引全球買家如星巴克和以色列史特勞斯公司的眼光。 儘管這段期間剛果還發生了全面經濟危機，總統約瑟夫． 卡比拉任滿拒絕下臺引發政治動盪，以及林林總總的暴力事件，包括聯合國所譴責的民兵暴行，這些民兵與政府有關聯。

廿世紀上半葉，在剛果仍受制於比利時的剝削統治期間，連綿的咖啡園遍佈剛果東部的青山。 該國的咖啡豆在布魯塞爾和羅馬的咖啡館裏烘焙，剛果的咖啡是世界頂級的咖啡。

1994年盧安達發生種族大屠殺，1997年剛果長期獨裁者莫布杜被推翻後，叛軍團體穿過這些林地，咖啡業同時遭到摧毀。