There is something else you should know about Burundi — it may take better advantage of the washing station model than any other country in the world. The washing station was designed for efficiency. It is an aggregation point where cherry from large numbers of farmers growing coffee on a very small scale can be collected and prepared for the market, allowing those farmers to participate in markets in a way that is relatively efficient and would be hard to imagine in their absence.

Beginning about 20 years ago in neighboring Rwanda, there was an awakening in the region to the idea that washing stations could do more than just aggregate supply — they could be critical control points for quality, where cherry is inspected, selected, and processed with a focus on quality in ways it hadn't been before. That was the unlock that converted Rwanda's coffee sector from commercial to specialty in record time, and washing stations in Burundi may be doing it even better, consistently maximizing the quality potential of the country's terroir and Bourbon stock through meticulous and pristine processing.