MULUGETA GUDETA
Generally speaking, legends and myth are created or defined in accordance with their social and cultural contexts. What is myth or legend in one culture may not be so to another society. Thus, one cannot expect Greek mythologies and legends to represent the realities of modern societies. According to one definition, “Myths and legends are the traditional stories of different cultures passed down through generations. They often explain how a particular people or culture came into existence…”
With time, some of the human discoveries are sometimes shrouded in myth or legends simply because they could only be explained in imaginative terms in the absence objective explanations or true stories. Some of the myths are found to be true while others remain myths of falsehoods. The most important use of legends and myths seems to give plausible explanations where there is none. What is known as the Creation Myth is considered, “supernatural mytho-religious story or explanation that describes the beginnings of humanity, earth, life and the universe (cosmology) usually as a deliberate act of “creation” by one or more deities. Many Creation Myths share broadly similar themes.”
We can perhaps extend this notion of “deliberate act of creation” in contradistinction to accidental acts of discovery that can also explain how certain things are created at a certain time and under certain circumstances. The discovery of coffee in Ethiopia may be considered such an accidental occurrence although often shrouded in a kind of “myth of discovery”. Let us take for instance Ethiopia’s coffee culture that has earned the admiration of almost the whole world for its uniqueness.
The entire world knows Ethiopia to be the first place where coffee was discovered. It is no doubt the first country in the world where coffee is still largely prepared and consumed in the old traditional ways that dates back to hundreds of years. Many countries in the world are consumers of the magic beans without producing them. Some of them have become major exporters and traders of coffee while they buy it from a second country to export it elsewhere.
There are also many countries that have started to grow coffee bans relatively lately and have become major exporters of the beans only very recently. Vietnam is one example and there are others who have followed suit, not because of the beauty of the beans but because coffee has become one of the natural beverages that are enjoying increased demand and consequently increased economic benefits. When we speak of Ethiopia’s coffee culture, the inevitable issue is the fact that the first discovery of the beans is shrouded in legends and myths. The original discovery of coffee beans by the Ethiopian goat herder whose name has now become
familiar with coffee growers, consumers and lovers as well. His name is Kaldis, and he is considered the discoverer of coffee when one day he accidentally observed his goats jumping up and down with so much excitement after consuming a good amount of the magic shrub. According to the same legend (in the absence of solid factual evidence), Kaldis’s first attempt to take the beans to monks in a monastery telling them what happened to the goats was rebuffed by the spiritual men who automatically considered it “the work of the Devil”.
They threw the beans into the fire that was burning nearby. What happened next after the monks hurled the coffee beans into the fire? The smell of the burning beans was so irresistible that they dragged some of them out and crushed them with a mortar in order to put out the ambers. What came after was something known as ‘serendipity’ in scientific parlance. The monks collected the crushed coffee powder and put it in a jug until it fermented and stirred their temptation to drink the brew. They realized that they kept vigorous and sleepless during the night when they were performing their devotional duties.
Whether this is a figment of the imagination on the part of the monks or a true story, the essential thing is the discovery of what is now the most popular beverage in the world. And when we realize that many scientific discoveries were made just by accident, Kaldis’s chance observation and the following experiment can only be accepted as a kind of “ancient serendipity” if we may be allowed to use the expression.
By the way it is no sheer accident that so many inventions or discoveries in Ethiopia were often considered “works of the Devil” as early as the 19th century when Emperor Menelik built a cinema hall in his new capital and movies that did not speak were shown to a suspicious public. The emperor’s courageous attempt was condemned by the clergy of the time a “work of the Devil” that made dead souls to dance on the white cloth. The showing of the movies at “seytan bet” (Satan’s house) was temporarily interrupted until the public instinctively understood that it had nothing to do with the Devil and defied clerical condemnation to return to the cinema hall. So Kaldis’s new discovery may not be the first incident when he faces rejection by the monks. It was a pity that although the clergy have played so many positive roles in the course of Ethiopian history, their resistance to change, new ideas and new things in general is not only legendary but also real.
In the field of philosophy for instance. The story of the enlightened monk Zara Yacob was also went through a moment of clerical opposition to one of their own who questioned the corruption that was going on in the church in Axum. Zara Yacob subsequently turned his dissenting views into ideas that questioned human behavior and men’s relations with God that was not satisfactory to him. While Professor Claude Sumner put Zara Yacob alongside 17th century French philosophers Rene Descartes for his rationality and defiance of archaic misconception, the church was harassing this young monk and forced him to hide in a cave to meditate further.
Kalids’s legendary story must be one among many instances of official, clerical or public doubts although it proves true at the end of the day. The legends of accidental discoveries tend to survive and even grow. The discovery of America Christopher Columbus was basically accidental because on the shores of the new world he met the so-called Red Indians who painted the faces with red ink and put feathers on the heads. They were terrific warriors who protected their territories so fiercely that it took a long time to subdue them thanks to firearms by the white men who took their lands by force. In the meantime Columbus has become a legend or a legendary figure who discovered just by accident a new world while he imagined reaching India instead. Hence the name Red Indians that he gave to the natives.
Let us stick to the legend of coffee and say that Kaldis must have been a smart boy who did not only bring his herds of goat and let them graze from dusk to dawn. He was also observing them, their behavior and mentally registered the changes he could notice at one point or another. Had he been a careless goatherd, he could have not noticed the effect of the raw coffee beans on the poor animals. Kaldis had therefore something of a scientist in him because observation is the first step in any scientific discovery.
While researching this article I came across a picture depicting Kaldis with his goats dancing around him. I think this imaginary picture should be turned into a small statue in honor of the boy herder who discovered the most beloved beverage in the entire world. That would also of been a monument in honor of all Ethiopian boys who spent their lives herding goats or sheep and continued the culture of livestock rearing they inherited from their ancestors.
Ethiopia must have had illustrious medicine men who discovered natural cures to so many of the diseases our forefathers suffered from. Unfortunately these people were forgotten by posterity simply because Ethiopians had no culture of registering on paper what they did and saw. They had oral traditions for doing so but what is spoken is lost easily while what is written survives, as our folks often say.
Another cultural barrier against registering our discoveries was the bad habit of keeping any knowledge away from society because of the stigma attached to some practices. Writing on paper was seen as the work of the Wizard as singing in public was considered taboo until very recently. To be called Azmari, a derogatory term for vocalist, was tantamount to saying that the man or woman in question is living by shouting, something considered a low occupation by the higher classes. Our forefathers who discovered so many traditional cures from herbs and plants were suffering the stigma of being called medhanitegna (medicine man) or ser betash literally meaning “uprooting plants”, a term in Amharic that has very negative connotations like someone who prepares poison from plant roots to destroy another man.
Ethiopia is a very old polity where traditional biases and prejudices against so many discoveries have survived for a long time now, passing from one generation to the other by word of mouth. Some of them are still going strong in rural communities who still live in the past. Meanwhile, Kaldis, the mythical figure of behind the discovery of coffee has no memorabilia to his name except that his name is hanging from the advertising signs hanging at very popular coffee houses in Addis Ababa. My take is that Kaldis as an interesting character, whether mythical or not, should be made into a documentary film or a comic book that might serve as inspiration for the new generation that is visibly short on imagination and new discoveries.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SATURDAY 6 MAY 2023
