BACK TO THE BEANS

It was back to serving coffee today. Great to be with the Starbucks crew again, and I had a wonderful time sharing a few stories with people about my trip. I also talked with my manager about setting up a meeting with her and the district manager. I'm curiuos to find out what Starbuck's involvement is with the coffee plantation that I visited in Ruiru, if any. The workers are paid so little for such hard work, and are so uniformed and misinformed about AIDS and other diseases. I plan to be involved in East Africa in the future and travel over there as often as I can get the time and resources to do so. Maybe I can be a Starbucks representative and do AIDS awareness education and do some work on fare wage advocacy.

Until that gets ironed out, it's full steam ahead on the precious gemstone business. I've got a call into U.S. Customs Import Division, and I'm going to check with the IRS about setting up a second company using my EIN number. I should know soon just how close I am to getting this thing off the ground. I'm thinking "Boraka Gemstones". First reactions? Boraka is Ki-Swahili for "Blessing". I'm figuring if I can get a gemstone business started that pays for all my trips to Africa, that would be a real blessing! I'm also planning to turn a portion of the profits from the sale of 2+ carat stones over to paying for grade-school fees for orphans in Kenya. That way these stones can be a blessing back to East Africa in another way as well. So, pray with me that the details of this new business venture come together, so I can put the profits to good use.

That's it for today. I think I'll take a little nap. I'm still waking up at 5am. Maybe tonight will be a full night sleep.