Proper Coffee

 

I would like to start with the obvious. We have been dependent on the export of what is sometimes called the green gold, coffee. Our foreign exchange earnings have for decades depended on it.

But there is a devil in the details. The challenges are as testing as they are many. Depending on one export item only makes us vulnerable to market fluctuation. The plantation itself is susceptible to danger with the slightest change of weather, not to speak of the exactitude required from cautiously picking the ripe berries, to drying them on spreading boards standing high enough to distance them from any foul-smelling material from the ground.

Coffee also needs storing away from damp environments and must be peeled, ground and roasted with utmost care. Perhaps, what may be very surprising is that regardless of the years of exporting it, seemingly from time immemorial, we have not been able to market it in a processed and finished form.

Competition in the world market has become increasingly tougher as new coffee growing countries have emerged, making our coffee market walk on a tight rope. Being the origin of coffee and with Ethiopian arabica having the best taste of all time, is not enough to make Ethiopia competitive in the coffee world. Rigorous public relations, marketing and advertising at an accelerated frequency is indispensable.

This article was triggered in an effort to expose our strength in that aspect. Last Friday morning, I happened to resist an invitation to sip coffee.

By the way, we should be very grateful to President Barack Obama who had been promoting our coffee when he said that he and the other members in the White House sip black coffee. What a parody in the contrasting colours black coffee in the White House!

Parody aside, let me delve into the social value aspect of coffee in our lives. I am having the fancy of an elderly woman who is bent upon becoming the first lady to make noon-time coffee in her neighbourhood. She has the habit of sending her little child to go around, heralding that coffee is ready for the routine get together, like coffee break. She tips the child with one or two handfuls of Kolo – roasted chick peas or cooked beans. The child loves that kind of errand so to speak.

I must have read articles condemning the daily practice of neighbours’ hosting coffee sipping, turn by turn, mainly on the grounds that the routine is nothing but waste of time in gossiping. But as I grew older, my rejection was simply a polite way of implicating that Ethiopia’s coffee has no equal in flavour.

The young lady with the advantage of eavesdropping scoffed my message. She told me she was from Brazil and looked up at me, perhaps expecting me to raise my eyebrows in surprise. But I was cool.

I accepted the basic facts of her country being the largest coffee exporter. But that does not make Brazil the origin of coffee and the exporter of the coffee beans mixed with other beans as blending quality. I gave her the web site address of this page and promised her to write this article. She promised to come back to the café the following Friday.

Come, she did, on the appointed Friday! I was not surprised. I had got to know the English quite well during my days at Leeds University. They say that of all commodities of the world, it is time which is the most precious. Haile Gabreselassie once told officials of our government that a micro second makes all the difference between winning and losing and that could translate into millions.

I could read a meaningful smile of appreciation in her eyes. She had read several of my articles and other materials posted on the website of this weekly. She mentioned that she had passed the address to many of her friends to read. She said she could not believe that a non-native could write English with such proficiency and selection of classic words and said that she looked forward to reading my subsequent articles, including my message on coffee.

I came of age with the ability to discern what is good and what is bad. My conclusion is that in the main, coffee sipping is worth the time spent to make it and sip it in rounds.

When I look at the cups coffee pots and plates, they give me the impression that the whole set is meant for many heads. The very sight of a woman sitting behind the coffee pot means harmony amongst neighbours. It does not matter if one is a Muslim or Christian, or from Tigray, Oromia or Amhara, but a neighbour is just that and a neighbour invited to share coffee.

Coffee sipping is also an outlet for breathing out suppressed thoughts and making it possible to exchange ideas. One could say it is a swell forum for freedom in expression. But any black brew made from powdered coffee does not have anything to do with coffee proper, except for its name.

Making coffee is not as simple as it sounds. The first step is the selection of beans cleansed of alien materials, after which they have to be thoroughly washed in lukewarm water, then evenly roasted in a roasting pan on charcoal fire, preferably. The beans must be roasted until they become brownish black in colour, at which point the tantalizing aroma over the oily bean is the smell of the best coffee-Ethiopian coffee.

But one has to be very careful not to pour coffee before it gets some time to cool a little and until the residue settles and is therefore separated from the brew.

Aromatic incense of varying kinds adds to the ambience and makes the ceremony a rather more attractive coffee day party.


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