Ex-drug mule becomes barista champion
[caption id="attachment_94069" align="alignright" width="300"] COFFEE DELIGHT: Barista Zeldrico Hansen, 22, in action at the Seattle Coffee Company's Hobie Beach outlet. He won the regional champs to qualify for the barista Nationals in Durban -[/caption]
Schauderville man smells the coffee to restart his life
FROM drug mule to coffee champion. This is how young Port Elizabeth barista, Zeldrico Hansen, 22, described the last two years of his life.
Hansen is one of six baristas who will be representing the Eastern Province at the national barista championship in Durban later this year.
Port Elizabeth coffee lovers might know him as the ever present, always smiling barista behind the counter of the Seattle Coffee Company in Beach Road.
But, it was just two years ago that Hansen decided to turn away from a life of crime to find his passion.
Yesterday, he described how his drug running took him from Schauderville to Johannesburg and eventually almost destroyed his life.
“From a young age I was a drug mule. As a young person I went through things that no child should go through,” Hansen said, adding that it was while living in Johannesburg that he hit rock bottom.
“I came back from Johannesburg to Schauderville. Here a pastor told me about the Work For A Living programme. After I completed the programme I heard about the Red Band Coffee Academy.”
The academy was established last year to train Work For A Living graduates to become baristas.
“I know today that God sent me a small coffee bean to change my life,” he said.
“A single coffee bean has so much value. If you think that it goes from the farmer to the roaster to me the barista.
“For me not making a proper cup of coffee means that I am letting everybody down,” he said.
Hansen said when he first started working at the Seattle Coffee Company the owner told him how they were assisting coffee farmers in Rwanda.
“I heard a story about a farmer in Rwanda who made enough money to send her child to school in England. I was so impressed with her story,” he said.
“When I was a drug mule I didn’t value anything. I always had lots of money but nothing was precious to me.
“It has been two years since then. Now I work all the time. It keeps me out of trouble. I am just here, pulling double shifts if I have to, but this is my passion.”
Hansen said when one of the trainers at the academy came to ask his boss to enter him in the barista academy he was both excited and a little nervous. This was because he had only been a barista for seven months and only worked at the Seattle Coffee Company for a month.
-Estelle Ellis
