From Berlin to Gitesi: Our Rwanda Coffee Documentary, Part One
A proper introduction to part one of our Rwanda coffee documentary. Filmed on our April 2025 trip, now live on YouTube. Plus the context for how Chris's first conversation with Aimé Dusabe Gahizi of Gitesi Coffee in 2023 shaped Warawul's whole approach to producer relationships.
This is the first article in a three-part series about our video documentary on Chris's trip to Rwanda in April 2025. The documentary is now live on YouTube, released a little over a year after the trip itself. Watch episode one below, then keep reading for the story behind the journey.
Why this trip means so much to us
This trip was something special for us. Chris first met Aimé Dusabe Gahizi, managing director of Gitesi Coffee, back in late 2023. Our coffee company was still just an idea at the time. The name Warawul would come almost a year later. But it was exactly this conversation, and many more with Aimé since, that helped us find our approach: transparent, long-term relationships with coffee producers, and working together to get the people at origin the recognition their work deserves.
Aimé has been a steady supporter of Warawul ever since, and that has been a huge source of motivation to keep going in an industry that often seems stuck in the exploitative, colonial and deeply unequal practices of the past. Meeting Aimé and visiting the washing station in person for the first time in April 2025 gave us real momentum again, and it's that momentum we wanted to share with you. That's why this Rwanda coffee documentary exists.
Episode one: From Berlin to Gitesi
In this first episode, Chris is joined by photographer and Warawul regular Leon Fülber for the long journey from Berlin to Kigali, Rwanda's capital. From there, the road gets noticeably rougher: city traffic gives way to steep, winding gravel roads as the two make their way toward Lake Kivu.
The Gitesi Coffee Washing Station sits in the hills above the lake, and it's here that Chris and Aimé finally meet again in person, two years after their first meeting in Kigali. The reunion starts with a walk through the Gitesi coffee farm, where Chris does something for the first time on this particular ground: he tastes a ripe coffee cherry straight off the tree, grown in the very soil that will eventually become the cup in your hands.
It's a small moment, but it says a lot about why we do this. Coffee is grown by people, on land they know intimately, long before it ever reaches a roastery. Seeing that with your own eyes, on the same farm where our own Gitesi coffee is grown, with Aimé himself as your guide, is exactly the kind of connection we want to build Warawul on.
Coming up in episode two
Next, Chris and Leon dig deeper into daily life at the Gitesi washing station itself. It's already on our YouTube channel if you want to jump in.
