Petani Kopi Bajawa Kesulitan Modal

Proses panen dan pengolahan kopi di Desa Beiwali, Kecamatan Bajawa, Kabupaten Ngada, Provinsi Nusa Tenggara Timur, terganggu. Hal itu karena dana untuk membayar biji kopi hasil panen dari tangan petani belum siap.

Nela, warga Bajawa, Kabupaten Ngada, Nusa Tenggara Timur,
memanen biji kopi di halaman rumahnya,

Modal untuk kebutuhan pembayaran kopi ini persoalan klasik yang dialami Gabungan Kelompok Tani dan Koperasi Serba Usaha Fa Masa di Desa Beiwali. Padahal, produk kopi yang dihasilkan itu diekspor ke Amerika Serikat melalui pihak lain.

”Saat ini sebenarnya sudah masuk masa

For the Manggarai People of Flores, Coffee is More Than Just a Crop or a Drink.

The coffee was Arabica.

                                                                       

It was served in a petite, colorful glass, its jet-black residue banked up at the bottom. The gritty texture gently massaged my tongue, tickling the excitable tissues of my soft palate. As I waited for its lean acidity to unravel itself fully from the intoxicating sweetness of the sugar that had captured my taste buds, I raised the glass close to my nostrils and inhaled greedily. The rising vapor settled within me, its warmth filling my nasal cavities, its gorgeous aroma sending my olfactory nerves firing on all cylinders. My eyes, shorn of conscious control, rolled upward, as if my irises had arranged a tryst with my drooping eyelids.

During that timeless yet transient moment, Manggarai coffee entered my soul. The spell of ecstasy

Coffee Manggarai: Black Gold

Black Gold

From a very young age, children of the Manggarai tribe must not only learn to drink their homegrown coffee and love it (that comes pretty naturally), but also to weave the daily sight of – and interaction with – the coffee plant, with its budding flowers, its fleshy red cherries and especially its fragrant beans, into their narrative of reality. As I joked with the younger boys, two girls aged no more than 10 were gaily pounding pestles taller than themselves into a huge timber mortar, rhythmically, dexterously pulverizing the beans inside into rough powder.

“We do this sometimes once or twice a week, sometimes every other day,” the woman who’d served us the brew remarked. “Always plenty of beans for all of us!”

“From Komodo With Love”

Orang komodo percaya bahwa komodo adalah saudara kembar mereka. Itulah yang membuat orang asli komodo “suku bajau yang pertama kali menemukan pulau komodo” tidak pernah mau meninggalkan pulau tersebut sekalipun sudah ditetapkan sebagai kawasan konservasi/National Park karena adanya binatang purba varanus komodensis tersebut. Sekalipun sudah banyak kejadian binatang langka tersebut memangsa penduduk sekitar itu.Fantastisnya, mereka percaya bahwa binatang langka tersebut tidak pernah mencelakai suku asli, kalaupun yang celaka hanyalah orang keturunan atau bukan suku asli.