The Pepper Eater Project

Enseno: Mustafah the Berbere Merchant

Posted on September 20, 2009 by Samner

Our next stop was Enseno, a town in the region of Maraco, which has a large berbere market. The week before, we had left two of our prototypes with Mustafah, a sucessful pepper merchant. When we arrive, Mustafah greeted us with a hand shake and brought out our two prototypes. He told us that he like the concept, especially over using the mukacha, but that our prototype was too small for his business, saying the Pepper Eater was “kid’s stuff.” He also gave us feed back on the output of the flakes, saying he likes to make two different consistencies: a finer consistency to sell and larger flakes to display the quality of his peppers. Mustafah also hires women to help him process his peppers, and he let them try the Pepper Eater. He told us that the prototype tended to get stuck, and some women then just gave up in frustration. He told us his wife wasn’t even interested in the Pepper Eater prototype, so with lots of great feedback, we packed up our two prototypes and returned to Ziway.