From coffee field to clinic: Oxfam's film about our cooperative
Oxfam RDC came to Idjwi with a camera. In five minutes their film goes from a hillside coffee field to the mill where the beans are sorted for export, and from there to the Matumaini clinic. For most of it, the women who do the work tell the story themselves.
It opens with Marcelline Budza, our founder, on why the cooperative had to exist. The women did every stage of the work on the coffee, and the men sold it. "She was treated as labour," Marcelline says, "but in the end she earned nothing." Often the money from a sale never came home at all.
A member of the cooperative, a mother of four, stands in her coffee field and remembers what selling used to cost. Getting the coffee to market meant the lake, and people drowned. Sometimes the coffee was simply taken from the women on the water.
Then the film shows what changed. Aisi Jenny, our agronomist, walks through a member's field in the village of Boza, where the coffee grows under shade trees and fruit trees and the women are laying out beds for vegetable seedlings. At the mill, Dr Manenji Mangundu, Oxfam's country director in the DRC, watches women sort coffee bound for the United States, Japan and Europe. A member of the clinic's staff explains why it was built: women in labour had to reach Monvu or cross the lake to Rwanda, risking shipwreck on the water and accidents on the road. The film closes with Dr Mangundu's appeal to donors and a last shot of Marcelline with a cup of the coffee.
The speakers move between French, Swahili and English, and the subtitles on the film switch between English and French. Below is everything said in the film, in English.
Transcript of the film
Translated from French and Swahili where those are spoken. Dr Mangundu speaks English. Repeated words and false starts are left out.
0:00 · Marcelline Budza, founder of Rebuild Women's Hope (French)
The opportunity on the ground was coffee. But that coffee was a source of discrimination, of socio-economic violence done to women. The woman went into the fields, she worked the land, she did every stage of the coffee chain, but when it came to selling, she was always pushed aside. She was treated as labour, but in the end she earned nothing. And when the man sold the coffee, he went off to enjoy himself with his friends, to marry other wives, and came home empty-handed. That is what plunged the woman into ever deeper poverty.
0:52 · A member of the cooperative, in her coffee field (Swahili)
I am a mother of four children. Here we are in the coffee field. We coffee farmers are very happy now, because before, when our coffee went to market, people drowned in the lake. We had many accidents. Sometimes they took our coffee from us on the water, and parents drowned there. It was hard going, and very dangerous.
1:28 · Marcelline Budza (French)
So when we arrived, it was really hard work. We raised awareness among the women and among the men, and after a while changes did begin to take root in the community. From there we brought the women together and started our small coffee production group.
1:52 · Aisi Jenny, RWH agronomist (French)
Here we are on the island of Idjwi, in the village of Boza to be exact, in one of the fields of our beneficiaries in this ongoing project. As you can see, this is a coffee field where we grow coffee. But not only coffee: we promote agroforestry, which means we plant shade trees and fruit trees, because coffee is a crop that really likes shade. We also support the women coffee farmers with vegetable growing. What they are doing over there is laying out the beds where they will raise seedlings of several vegetable crops. It's very beautiful.
2:31 · Dr Manenji Mangundu, Oxfam's country director in the DRC (English)
I'm Dr Manenji Mangundu, the country director for Oxfam in DRC. I am here visiting Rebuild Women's Hope.
This is a project specifically working with the women. As you can see, women are working, cleaning up the coffee that is going to be exported to the US, exported to Japan, exported in Europe. But when you come and look at the level of engagement of the women, and the level of commitment to help support the women, this is incredible.
In addition to what we are seeing here at the treatment plant for the coffee, they are also building a women's health centre in Idjwi. This is supposed to cater for the women that are sexually harassed because of the situation that we have of the war in East DRC.
3:32 · A member of staff at the Matumaini clinic (French)
Over time we saw that our women coffee farmers were facing problems in childbirth. They had to travel long distances to reach Monvu or to cross over to Rwanda, with all the problems of shipwrecks and road accidents. That is how, with RWH's management, after the coffee was sold, we came together to see how we could create the hospital with the profit from the coffee sale.
4:03 · Dr Manenji Mangundu (English)
The idea is to build a business, like a model, that will sustainably support the women that are hopeless because of the humanitarian crisis that we have in the East. And we are all happy with the little funds that have been put to good use. We are calling for more support to such kind of development initiatives, because we depend on the coffee that is organic, coming from DRC, but as well serving in the humanitarian sector. So for the donors, we say: more and more women in the east of Congo, who have suffered 30 years of war, desperately need such kind of assistance for them to continue to have hope for the future.
4:50 · The film ends on Marcelline drinking a cup of the coffee.
The clinic in the film opened in December 2020. Members were dying in childbirth with nowhere on the island to go, so we built it through the pandemic, with core funding from Mozzo Coffee's C2C fund. By December 2025 it had helped deliver more than 8,000 children.
Our thanks to Oxfam RDC and to Dr Mangundu for coming to see the work and for making this film. The original is on Oxfam RDC's LinkedIn page, where you can share it. If you would like to buy the coffee these women grow, this page explains how to reach the cooperative.