Mirembe Kawomera (also known as Peace Kawomera, or "Delicious Peace") is an
interfaith
Interfaith dialogue refers to cooperative, constructive, and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions (i.e. "faiths") and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs, at both the individual and institutional levels. It is ...
Fair trade coffee
Fair trade coffee is coffee that is certified as having been produced to fair trade standards by fair trade organizations, which create trading partnerships that are based on dialogue, transparency and respect, with the goal of achieving greate ...
cooperative in Mbale, Uganda. The cooperative is made up of
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
,
Christian
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
, and
Muslim
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
farmers. Founded in 2003 by JJ Keki, the members of Mirembe Kawomera use music and
fair trade coffee
Fair trade coffee is coffee that is certified as having been produced to fair trade standards by fair trade organizations, which create trading partnerships that are based on dialogue, transparency and respect, with the goal of achieving greate ...
to promote peace between religions.
History
Jewish Ugandan coffee farmer and musician J.J. Keki founded Peace Kawomera after witnessing the attacks of
September 11, 2001
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...
firsthand during a trip to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
. Deeply moved, he felt compelled to bring different religions together in peace. When Keki returned to Uganda, he walked from village to village, enlisting Jewish, Christian, and Muslim farmers to join his Fair Trade cooperative. Today, over 1,000 farmers have joined Peace Kawomera. He got help marketing their coffee from the organization Kulanu (All of Us ). Laura Wetzler, a volunteer, called a long list of coffee roasters, in alphabetical order, until she got to the Fair Trade company, Thanksgiving Coffee. CEO Paul Katzeff at Thanksgiving Coffee says (according to an article on Green America's website): “For me the story was inspiring...People of faith finding hope through coffee. Choosing cooperation in a world torn up by intolerance. I said, ‘OK, I'll buy it.’”
This alliance of Muslims, Jews, and Christians in Uganda with Kulanu and Thanksgiving Coffee in the United States has had two major benefits for the Ugandan farmers, as described in YES magazine: "By banding together and by establishing a fair trade relationship, the farmers now realize enough profits from sales to meet their families' basic need?s
ica sharp contrast to the hardship of trying to sell as individuals to large corporate buyers in a glutted world market. Better circumstances have, in turn, sweetened relations between the unique Mbale Jewish community and their more numerous Muslim and Christian neighbors." It has also gotten the attention of synagogues across America as well as the media in the US and Israel.
Products
In 2006, the Thanksgiving Coffee Company in
Fort Bragg, California
Fort Bragg, officially the City of Fort Bragg, is a city along the Pacific Coast of California along Shoreline Highway in Mendocino County. The city is west of Willits, at an elevation of . Its population was 6,983 at the 2020 census.
Fort ...
, became the sole distributor of Peace Kawomera coffee. They produce dark roast, light roast, and decaf coffee from the cooperative's harvest.
The farmers of Mirembe Kawomera are also musicians, and founder JJ Keki refers to himself as the cooperative's "Music Director." The
Smithsonian Folkways
Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was fou ...
album "
Delicious Peace: Coffee, Music & Interfaith Harmony in Uganda" features music from members of the cooperative, recorded and compiled by
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
Professor and Rabbi Jeffrey Summit. According to Folkways, the album "aims to overcome religious conflict and bring peace through song
ndfeatures uplifting, multilingual songs that teach cooperation through music."
[http://www.folkways.si.edu/about_us/news_press.aspx#02_13_13-delicious]
References
{{reflist
* "Delicious Peace: Coffee, Music & Interfaith Harmony in Uganda" from Smithsonian Folkway
* London, Charles. "Not Just a Cup, but a Just Cup." ''O, The Oprah Magazine'', August 2008
* Thanksgiving Coffee Compan
Fair trade organizations