26/05/2026
Introducing our new coffee from Ninga Washing Station and the Bumba Hill producers, in Burundi.
The Ninga Washing Station was set up by . Have a swipe through as we share some of their story in this caption.
Ninga is available now from our website.
INTRODUCING NINGA WASHING STATION
Long Miles was founded by Ben and Kristy Carlson, who moved to Burundi in 2011 and saw that both injustice and poor farming practices permeated the country’s newly privatised coffee industry. In their first coffee season, they worked with just fifty coffee farmers, and now work directly with over 14,000 coffee farming families on traceable and unique hills within Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya.
In Burundi, they work with 7,500 smallholding farmers, who on average grow less than a bag of coffee per annum. Three washing stations provide a central connection point and focus to work with farmers on 12 unique hills. Support for coffee producers happens all year round, not just during harvest, and Long Miles is tightly integrated into the communities it supports.
Bumba Hill (where Ninga Washing Station is located) rises to 1,700 masl and is home to 620 farmers and 156,425 coffee trees. In 2025, 694 farmers delivered coffee cherries from this hill to Ninga Washing Station. Coffee is the region’s most important crop, alongside corn and beans, yet the community remains far beyond the reach of clean drinking water and electricity.
OPENING THE NINGA WASHING STATION
In 2019, Long Miles purchased land 10 kilometers from their Bukeye Washing Station beside the Nkokoma River. At 1,900 masl, this became Ninga Washing Station, the third washing station to be built by the Long Miles Project, created after recognising that farmers in the region were traveling long distances to reach washing stations offering fair scales and just prices for their coffee.
Access to fresh water became one of the greatest challenges in opening Ninga, with complications in reaching fresh flowing water until eventually finding clean groundwater at 65m deep. Water is essential at every stage of coffee growing and processing, from nurturing coffee trees to floating, rinsing, pulping, fermenting, and soaki
