Coffee in Ethiopia is a beverage worthy of a legend. “The most popular legend of coffee in Ethiopia usually goes something like this: Kaldi, an Abyssinian goat herder from Kaffa, was herding his goats through a highland area near a monastery. He noticed that they were behaving very strangely that day and had begun to jump around excitedly, bleating loudly and practically dancing on their hind legs. He found that the source of the excitement was a small shrub (or, in some legends, a small cluster of shrubs) with bright red berries. Curiosity took hold and he tried the berries for himself.
Like his goats, Kaldi felt the energizing effects of the coffee cherries. After filling his pockets with the red berries, he rushed home to his wife, and she advised him to go to the nearby monastery in order to share these “heaven-sent” berries with the monks there.
Upon arrival at the monastery, Kaldi’s coffee beans were not greeted with elation, but with disdain. One monk called Kaldi’s bounty “the Devil’s work” and tossed it into a fire. However, according to legend, the aroma of the roasting beans was enough to make the monks give this novelty a second chance. They removed the coffee beans from the fire, crushed them to put out the glowing embers, and covered them with hot water in an ewer in order to preserve them (or so the story goes).”
Coffee has now grown from the annals of legend and oral tales to that of achieving a celebrity status as the number one beverage widely used throughout the world. It has become a habit, a culture, a fascination, a cure, a source of wealth and the main catalyst of daily pleasure and happiness during holidays in particular.
No Ethiopian holiday celebration is complete without coffee which is both a catalyst and trigger of feelings of happiness that triggers the holiday spirit and makes people feel upbeat. Let alone holidays, funeral ceremonies are accompanied with abundant supply of coffee which is believed, to serve as mood booster during times of depression and sorrow.
Coffee in Ethiopia is usually considered a remedy not only against physical symptoms but also spiritual illnesses such as depression, but also a powerful ingredient that opens human minds to states of deep trance and provides great energy and vision into past and present states of minds. Like any African country, Ethiopia has a rich spiritual tradition in the form of religious events or non-religious rituals and faiths that bring man at the center of their interest or concern. Unfortunately, these traditional practices and knowledge are either ignored or fallen victims to biases and prejudices.
Usually, coffee ceremonies in Ethiopian households are rare moments people speak their minds, share their thoughts, express their likes and dislikes and discuss the most important political and economic topics without fear of being spied on or heard by invisible ears. An Ethiopian coffee ceremony is perhaps the only place where people feel free in the true meaning of the term from outside intrusion as well as trust each other.
The holiday coffee ceremony has a special allure and purpose. It is the moment when happiness reaches its peak and what is known as the ‘holiday’ mood is the dominant feeling. The holiday coffee ceremony in Ethiopia is much more detailed and elaborate than the usual everyday ceremony. Starting from its color to its taste and the feeling it creates in the drinkers, coffee is probably the king of holidays.
What is the color of coffee? Brown or dark brown, okay. How about grass? It’s green, in the rainy season in particular. And flowers? Yellow also in the rainy season and particularly in September. What is amazing about Ethiopian holidays is that nature and society seem to have a close interaction between them. It seems they have an appointment. This reminds me of a poem by the late Ethiopian poet Mengistu Lemma who penned the following observation: who knows if the birds and the holidays have a rendezvous every year? After September, the rains stop and nature changes color. Green is the dominant color everywhere, sometimes mixed with yellow flowers. Grass is growing, the fields wear green carpets. And that’s amazingly beautiful.
Coffee is a ubiquitous presence in every Ethiopian holiday. The first thing that housewives are engaged in during any holiday is to make breakfast and then boil coffee. The coffee that made during the holiday morning is also different in the sense that it is carefully prepared with all the trappings that accompany the process. The accessories to the holiday coffee ceremony during holidays are almost similar in all households, big or small. The coffee is prepared in a special clay pot if possible, bigger than the usual one and surrounded with more coffee cups than on ordinary days.
During this special coffee ceremony, guests, neighbors, and everyone around are invited to attend this special ceremony. Big and round home-baked bread is brought to the coffee table and the head of the household has the exclusive privilege to slice it into smaller pieces that are distributed to the guests. The popcorns are exploding in the red-hot pan and then presented to the guests on a big, round and traditional plate made of straw.
When the coffee pot on the red-hot charcoal starts to send steam into the air, the mistress of the ceremony puts it on the small and round stand beside the big wooden rectangular plate specially made for carrying the coffee cups that are distributed to the guests. Green grass, sprinkled with the yellow flower, covers much of the space in the room which is usually the living room where the guests sit and eat the snacks of bread and popcorn before sipping their coffee.
The mood in the room is one of buoyancy, accompanied with laughter music, and ecstasy. The air is filled with noise and words of blessing fill the room until the three rounds of coffee servings are completed and the guests disperse after prayers and blessings are poured on the hosts after the completion of the coffee ceremony.
By the way, history tells us that coffee was not always brewed ad drank. For a long time, coffee was chewed or crushed and made into a paste that was eaten like porridge. According to some sources, the habit of crushing and boiling to drink coffee is a rather recent practice among the ancient people in Ethiopia and around the Red Sea and the Arab world. “According to some sources, there was also a way of eating coffee as a porridge, and this method of consuming coffee could be seen amongst several other indigenous nations of Ethiopia around the tenth century.
“Gradually, coffee became known as a beverage in Ethiopia and beyond. In some populations, coffee cherries were crushed and then fermented into a kind of wine. In others, coffee beans were roasted, ground, and then boiled. Gradually, the custom of brewing coffee took hold and spread elsewhere. Around the 13th century, coffee spread to the Islamic world, where it was revered as potent medicine and powerful prayer aid and was boiled much like medicinal herbal decoctions are boiled—for intensity and strength. You can still find traditions of boiling coffee in Ethiopia, Turkey, and much of the rest of the Mediterranean, where they are known as Ethiopian coffee, Turkish coffee and other, similar names.”
When coffee did became the main beverage in Ethiopia and the catalyst of pleasure and ecstasy during holidays in particular? The answer to this question can only be based on empirical observations rather than legend or history. The first answer could probably be that coffee became one of the main daily beverages in Ethiopia simply because it was loved by its users or consumers. Coffee had never been a stranger in Ethiopian households because Ethiopia is largely believed to be the origin of coffee which then spread to other areas or regions. It has now become the beverage most widely consumed in the world. That is not by chance but due to coffee’s multidimensional attractions as a beverage; cure both for the body and the spirit.
Back to the legend we referred to above. “Like his goats, Kaldi felt the energizing effects of the coffee cherries. After filling his pockets with the red berries, he rushed home to his wife, and she advised him to go to the nearby monastery to share these “heaven-sent” berries with the monks there.
Upon arrival at the monastery, Kaldi’s coffee beans were not greeted with elation, but with disdain. One monk called Kaldi’s bounty “the Devil’s work” and tossed it into a fire. However, according to legend, the aroma of the roasting beans was enough to make the monks give this novelty a second chance. They removed the coffee beans from the fire, crushed them to put out the glowing embers, and covered them with hot water in an ewer to preserve them (or so the story goes).
All the monks in the monastery smelled the aroma of the coffee and came to try it out. Much like the tea-drinking Buddhist monks of China and Japan, these monks found that coffee’s uplifting effects were beneficial in keeping them awake during their spiritual practice (in this case, prayer and holy devotions). They vowed that from then on they would drink this newfound beverage each day as an aid to their religious devotions.
It is a pity that there is no legend about the role of coffee during Ethiopian holidays. We may nevertheless create one if we go deeper into the evolution of coffee in Ethiopian cultures. For the time being, let us relax and capture that rare holiday mood with a cup or two of strong black coffee and celebrate Kaldi’s imagination.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD WEDNESDAY 9 OCTOBER 2024
