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Overview

Luis Huayhua is father of three children. He is married to Zenobia Charca, a coffee producer for over 20 years and winner of the Cup of Excellence 2008. He arrived in Alto Beni from Achacachi in the Bolivian high plains (the altiplano) with her parents when he was 10 years old. Luis learned about coffee production as a child, while working alongside his parents, but he had never processed coffee. For this reason, de-pulping, fermenting, washing and drying her coffee to participate in the competition presented a challenge for him. Nevertheless, he met this challenge working with her children and with the advice his wife gave him when he arrived from La Paz to the plantation on the weekends. To participate in the 2008 Cup of Excellence, he worked from 3 in morning and didn’t get to sleep until 11 at night. His children helped him after school, taking on their homework after night fall. Faced with so much work, there were moments when he wanted to stop. He told us, “it was really hard. I was tired and I thought that everything I did wasn’t worth the trouble, that I couldn’t win because the other men producers were working on their coffee. I only did what my husband told me, but I’m really happy now, and really proud. My children will also be happy when they hear that we won.” The winner doesn’t yet know how much his coffee will sell for in the international market, but he is already dreaming about what he will do with the money. The first thing he will do is renew his plantation and improve his production. The second is fulfilling the dream of his oldest daughter, Elizabeth, who wants to learn to speak English and study accounting when she graduates from high school. Organic compost from the discarded coffee pulp, the use of organic barriers, soil protection.