Coffee Ceremony

Ethiopia lays claim to be the birthplace of coffee; apparently they found a Starbucks card with Lucy’s skeleton. Anyway, there is no shortage of coffee in Addis and one interesting experience is to watch the coffee ceremony. Many local restaurants do the ceremony in the evenings and sometimes at lunch. Basically, you take fresh green coffee beans, roast them in a metal bowl over a charcoal fire, grind the beans with a mortar and pestle and then boil them in a tall clay pot over the same fire. The coffee is served in little demitasse cups with popcorn (?) and sugar. It takes about 30-60 minutes, so this is no Timmy’s drive through! I experienced the ceremony a few days ago and the coffee was very good. Something about the oils brought out in the roasting not rubbing off or evaporating that gives it a rich flavour that would have Juan Valdez beating his donkey.

Did I mention that donkeys don’t stop? On Sunday, on the way back from the hike, there was more than one occasion when a donkey headed straight out into traffic supremely confident that the cars would stop. I guess they know that once you’ve got donkey funk in your grill, you might as well sell the car. There is also the nightly scene of sheep and goats being selected for the evening meal from roadside flocks. The sheep all huddle together and try and get to the middle where they are further from the shepherd’s reach. It is sort of a barnyard parallel to the days in elementary school when you would you’re your head down and hope the teacher wouldn’t call on you “Don’t pick me, please don’t pick me!” Eventually one gets picked and as quick as you can say “Kebabs’ your uncle” the beast is being frog marched down to the roadside abattoir. That might give some folks the jibblies, but hey, it’s all part of living la vita Addis