The oldest coffee in the world?

By Thomas Lewton and Alice McCool 11 September 2018

From huts in remote villages to internet cafes in the capital city, coffee ceremonies are the centre of social life and hospitality in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee.

The heart of Ethiopian society

“Give them coffee in the bamboo cups,” instructed Annaz Haile, the family matriarch, as my companion Thomas and I sat among guests at a coffee ceremony she was holding outside her house. We were in rural Bonga, in the southern highlands of Ethiopia’s Kafa region, and the mid-morning sun was quickly burning through the clouds.

Guests chatted in the local language of Kafi Noonoo, while Haile and her daughter Asayech – whom she supervised closely – prepared the coffee. Her husband, Gebremariam, broke a huge slab of homemade bread into small pieces and instructed younger family members to share it among the visitors.

Inhale the aroma

To make the coffee, the women had placed raw coffee beans on a clay plate to dry in the sun before they were washed and roasted on a flat iron pan on an open fire. Each guest was then encouraged to inhale the heavenly aroma of the roasting beans, before they were ground using a pestle and mortar and put into a jebena, the traditional Ethiopian coffee pot.

Alongside the smell of the roasting beans, in many Ethiopian coffee ceremonies, guests are also treated to the smell of burning frankincense. In ceremonies held away from nature in towns and cities, grass or straw is laid on the floor – bringing back memories of village life for many.

We start learning how to prepare coffee when we are seven years old. Our mothers guide our hands to roast, grind and wash the coffee,” Haile said.