It was a really hot day and Kaldi the Ethiopian shepherd was resting in the shade. He looked up and saw that his goats were acting strangely -- it was like they were dancing. He then discovered they had been munching on some nearby berries Kaldi didn't recognize. To his chagrin, the goats didn't particularly want to sleep that night. Kaldi then tried the berries himself and found that they gave him new energy. So he took his discovery to the nearby monastery, whose monks had the idea to turn the berries into a drink -- one that would enable them to stay awake during nighttime prayer vigils.
And Ethiopian coffee was born. Or so legend has it.
1200 years later, I had the pleasure of taking several of our Global Studies students to a local Ethiopian restaurant a couple of weeks ago to experience a tradition sacred to Ethiopian culture to this day. Our server, Naben, could not have been a more perfect hostess. Seeing that I was a teacher with students eager to learn and experience new things, she needed no prompting to explain the various stages of the coffee ceremony:
First she brought out the raw, green coffee beans so we could see what they look like before roasting. She then disappeared to the kitchen and a good while later reappeared with a tray of sizzling black-brown roasted beans to show us.
She then was gone a good half hour until she emerged with several trays laden with special ceramic coffee pots called jebenas, beautiful porcelain cups and burning incense.
Some of you know I am not a coffee drinker. I've just never acquired a taste for it, and have been drinking tea since my childhood in Australia. But this is a coffee I must drink, mostly in order to honor our hosts and model to our students that everything deserves to be tried at least once. Sure enough, they were delighted by the entire experience, the student next to me saying this was the smoothest coffee he had ever tasted. Our dear New Zealand friends, Neil and Jill, who were visiting last August, tasted coffee all over our city full of coffee shops and declared the Ethiopian brew they tasted as their favorite.
You should check to see if there's an Ethiopian restaurant or coffee shop in your city and set aside some time for this cultural experience. And don't rush it. They certainly don't.
