The Story of Ethiopian Coffee Beans Are Ethiopian Hambella Flower Champion Coffee Beans Expensive

Ethiopia Travel Journal 2018 (1): The Amber Totem

Coffee really is a magical agricultural product.

Whether it's Thai farmers growing rice or Brazilian workers cutting sugarcane, they work diligently from sunrise to sunset through the changing seasons, letting their sweat seep into the soil in exchange for a living. For them, this way of life is a generational tradition and a matter of survival; they probably don't form spiritual bonds with their crops. I remember stores in Aomori turning local specialties (apples) into cartoon characters and holding harvest festivals to promote a whole line of by-products, and I could never quite tell whether that was a commercial tactic or a sincere way of sharing joy. But next to Ethiopians, all of that seems superficial — because coffee there is not just a crop. It's part of who they are.

I once did the mental math: how many glasses of wine does a French winery owner drink each day? If they drink at all, it's probably to entertain buyers or check quality. People often ask me whether working in coffee means drinking a lot of it. I usually give a vague answer — perhaps because "not much" sounds impolite, or fails to meet their expectations. Honestly, when I drink coffee these days it's usually through the critical lens of quality evaluation. Even when I happen to have a coffee while traveling, the professional habit kicks in and an invisible ruler in my mind starts measuring and comparing. It's a little embarrassing, when I think about it.

Ethiopians — regardless of age or gender — drink coffee every day. They grow up with this amber-colored liquid. But compared with the image of coffee I grew up with in the developed world, their relationship is more three-dimensional and woven into daily life. Coffee is the gestures and expressions of a mother hosting guests at home; the residual warmth of the charcoal used to boil water as the sun sets; part of the very building material of house walls, or the hills surrounding the village where children run and play. In ancient times coffee was not merely a beverage but a sacred ritual, and an important element of weddings and funerals.

I wanted an analogy like "dipping dumplings in vinegar" or "eating popcorn at the movies" — things that feel perfectly natural in daily life — but nothing quite captured the depth of the connection. Thinking it over, the closest parallel is the bright moon and mooncakes at the Mid-Autumn Festival: mooncakes are commodities, but the moon is part of the world around you. For Ethiopians, coffee is like that ever-present moon, more fundamental than any processed product. Rather than saying Ethiopians chose coffee, it's closer to the truth that coffee chose the land of Ethiopia.

Though this country was never colonized by a European power, ethnic tensions and conflict still flare frequently. I canceled my trip the previous year because several coffee-producing areas had been damaged. From an industry perspective, I wanted to see how the birthplace of coffee is adapting to the industry's rapid changes, to understand what coffee means to locals — especially the indigenous tribal peoples — and to take in the magnificent scenery of the Great Rift Valley. As it happened, a local friend invited me to write a preface for his forthcoming book, and that sealed the journey.

Ethiopia Travel Journal 2018 (2): Khat in the Rift Valley

In the waiting lounge at Qingyuan Gang Airport, a travel program about Africa was playing on the television.

I wasn't deliberately watching the screen. What registered was really just a flickering box between the flight-status display and the planes parked outside the window, whose lines and colors resonated with something in my memory and set me thinking of certain scenery.

I buried myself again in the yellow cupping sheet, recalling the taste of the coffee. Within three days we had evaluated more than 80 entries at the competition. The flavors that had lingered on my tongue lay like oil paints on a canvas, covered over layer by layer. The densely packed little characters on the carbon-copy bottom page were no longer legible (whatever was scrawled in a flash of lightning could hardly be called clear), but looking at the sheet as a whole — not reading it, since reading was impossible — seemed to summon sensory impressions from certain moments in memory. Black ink, lines straight as ruler marks, checkmarks filed to the left or right. I struggled to find the coffee that had given me the same shock in both the preliminary and final rounds. What state of mind was I in when I recorded those flavors? The handwriting on the carbon paper was like shadows under a blazing sun: from the outline I could recognize it as mine, but just as shadows shift with the sun's position, what I wrote shifted with coffee's mental effects. I suspect only I would ever notice this.

"Jasmine, bergamot, tropical fruits, honey, grapes, smooth texture" — I read my own tasting notes while the host's tense voice crossed a dried riverbed on screen.

Was it Gesha? The memory pieces triggered a chain reaction, like bowling pins tumbling. My subconscious had apparently recognized the Great Rift Valley I'd just visited on the TV screen, and the scene dredged up impressions of African coffee, Gesha in particular — so unconsciously I had filed the coffee I'd recently tasted under that flavor profile. One answer, like dominoes, resolved the other question. Whether it was actually true, only more coffee would tell. Memories jumped about randomly, and the camera hovered over mountains and fields before settling on a group of girls whose hair was coated with orange mud, singing and dancing on the grassland, holding out rattan whips with almost pleading expressions to boys of the same Turmi tribe, asking to be whipped and bear scars that symbolize happiness.

The host introduced local customs with a look of astonishment. My mind went to the coffee pot the camera had never caught. Even if I told those villagers, "you could find coffee with jasmine, bergamot, tropical fruits, honey, and grapes just outside your village — that would be Gesha," they'd be as puzzled as most consumers who have no interest in coffee. If I wanted to connect with them, I'd need a more universal topic.

On that journey I visited different tribal villages. Besides the scarred girls there were boys running naked on the backs of bulls, and customs like having to lift and drop a heavy stone weighing dozens of jin to qualify for marriage. The most sobering discovery, though, was the widespread cultivation of khat. A few years earlier I'd heard from a local producer that because coffee quality in the Rift Valley is so high, growers had no incentive to switch. But huge demand from neighboring countries (Somalia among them), the continuing slide in coffee futures prices, and geopolitics have pushed more and more locals toward this thirsty plant that acidifies the soil.

Ethiopia Travel Journal 2018 (3): Coffee, At Least It Has Boiled

Ahead of the jeep, a young shepherd was flicking a whip, unhurriedly gathering cattle and sheep scattered across the road. He wasn't clearing the way for us; another herd that likewise filled the entire road was approaching from the distance. Among the Great Rift Valley tribes, wealth is counted in livestock. It's said that marrying a wife requires 30 sheep, so the two herds before me looked well matched.

The lead animal was a brown bull, its short horns used as spools wound with several turns of nylon rope — like the white headbands cartoon characters wear to cheer themselves on. Rather than a chosen leader, it probably just walked faster, and its companions didn't mind following. All the local cattle were very thin, their ribs clearly visible. Was it the activity, or lack of food? But that didn't add up — grass on the great plains should be plentiful. Perhaps they only eat certain grasses? It flicked its tail and ambled forward. I never got to discuss it before leaving, as everyone was more interested in coffee. But when friends later looked at my photos, they pointed out the hump on the cattle's backs. This is the Borana, a breed unique to the Oromia region that survives in harsh environments; the hump, like a camel's, stores water.

Two herds of over a hundred cattle and sheep met on the narrow dirt road, and the moment they passed each other was as smooth as water flowing over stone — not a drop splashed. If they saw me on a subway platform after work, colliding with alighting passengers like a game of dodgeball as I jostled for position, they might well feel superior.

The shepherd gave a light nod to the one opposite; the response was equally calm. Both kept their eyes forward, on the animals. Perhaps when you see something often enough, it becomes part of the scenery — like bus drivers on circular routes, whose expressions go blank when they pass a colleague on the opposite road. Under the great plain's sky, the same route, the same animals, for generations, stirring up the same dust.

I was pondering the pointless question of whether a sheep that secretly defected to the opposite herd would even be noticed, when knocking on the car door interrupted me. Several children had run out of the scrub as the car slowed — they were evidently practiced at spotting vehicles carrying tourists.

"Highland? Highland?" the lead boy kept shouting through the half-open window. His ill-fitting jersey was smeared with mud; on the wrist he stretched toward the car was a bracelet in green, yellow, and red — the Ethiopian flag. His bare toes were rough. Hiding behind him, a younger boy clutched a yellow square plastic container — probably his brother. More and more children ran toward our car, a scene more chaotic than the herds ahead, rather like a subway platform at rush hour.

The driver opened the window and tossed an empty water bottle to one of the little girls. "Highland is a local bottled water brand," he explained. "They're not begging for money — they just want more containers for water. The villagers left before sunrise to fetch water from the rivers nearby. In a year or two these children will join them. If you finish your water, give them the empties too." The yellow jugs beside the little boy are the type most commonly used locally; full, one weighs more than five kilograms — surely too heavy for a child that age. Watching documentaries as a kid, I always assumed Africa meant hot and dry, picturing Ethiopia as desert. In fact many places there have water sources; it's the poor infrastructure that forces villagers to spend hours each day fetching clean water. Forty-five percent of school-age children there don't attend primary school and linger on the streets instead, because their time is reserved for the family's water needs. A UNICEF article from March noted that people in underdeveloped regions worldwide — especially women and children — spend a combined 200 million hours every day transporting water, mostly on foot.

That day I visited two villages and was welcomed, as always, with a coffee ceremony. Everyone sat outdoors beside houses built of hay, the sun-baked mud underfoot radiating warmth that didn't match the color of the evening sky. When the water came to a boil, light smoke curled from the mouth of the black Jabena pot, and not far off came the cheerful noise of the water-fetching party, home safely from its morning's trek. My companions debated whether coffee would keep the local children awake, or technicalities like extraction ratios and water temperature. My gaze had fallen on a child a little apart from the crowd, casually scooping water from a puddle with half a gourd shell to drink — a puddle trampled by cattle and sheep not long before.

A burning sensation spread from my fingertips. While calculating how many years 200 million hours adds up to, and imagining how many civilizations could be built with that time, I reached a conclusion: it's healthy for local children to start drinking coffee young, for one simple reason — the water used to brew it has, at least, been boiled.

About the Author: Patrick Tam

One of Hong Kong's first certified Specialty Coffee Association of Europe and America baristas and cuppers, a Cup of Excellence international judge, columnist, university guest lecturer, and founder of the specialty coffee shop Knockbox.

Immune to caffeine but powerless against cha chaan teng coffee; makes his own coffee simple, just seeking not bitter and not messy.

Once passionate about photography. A collection of antique lenses found new life through coffee: capturing moments on farms, using photos as bridges to shorten the distance between consumers and farmers.

Coffee is not just a hobby, but a path.

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