Emily attempts to make coffee

After I had sampled quite a bit of coffee and observed many coffee preparations, I figured it was time to learn the traditional ceremony.  As with most things, it looks much easier than it is!  Not that making coffee is that hard, but doing it well certainly takes some practice.  The coffee ceremony is traditionally done by women and served to guests.  Visitors sit around and talk while the coffee roasts, the water boils, the popcorn pops and the incense wafts. It's a social event that can last hours -- which by some reckoning is a really long time to wait for a teeny, tiny cup of coffee! But it's the most delicious coffee IN THE WORLD.  And so thick and rich.  And... don't even get me started.

The wonderful women at Common River took me under their wings to show me how to do the coffee 

ceremony.  Galatemo-ne Tsege  Asho!  They were not willing, however, to let the inept farengi burn herself, so some of the tasks were, um, modified on my behalf, and they tended the fire the entire time.  You will notice that Zenebe appears in a bunch of these photos.  After I had tried the process once, he got excited and wanted to learn, too.  How awesome is that?  Perhaps he'll become the first male master of coffee ceremonies?



Before you can start a coffee ceremony, you need to spruce up the serving area.  Fresh green grass at the very minimum, but flowers really look good, don't they?  This is probably my favorite part of the whole ceremony (other than drinking the coffee, of course).  Also, you need to remember to start the fire and not get distracted by arranging all those pretty flowers.

Raw green coffee beans still have silvery skins on them, so the first step is to wash off the skins by rubbing the beans in a dish of water, and then straining off the water and skins -- without losing any beans. Yeah, right.  Let's just say there was a bit of chaff in the coffee I made, but nobody seemed to mind... (or dared complain?)

Now for the fun part: roasting!  Zenebe found it a bit tricky to keep all the beans on the metal pan, so he kept having tiny little explosions from popping beans that had fallen into the fire!  As you roast, the beans will start to smoke --

aaahhh!  They are not going to turn all the same even brown like the beans you buy in an American store.  They will vary from light brown to black -- but don't wait till they all darken, because they'll keep cooking after you take them off the fire.  

Next you ceremoniously carry the smoking beans around to all the people waiting patiently for their coffee, and they sniff in anticipation.  

Amare and Zenebe obligingly waft the beans I roasted.

Then you fill the clay coffee pot (jebena) with water and put it over the fire to boil, while you do the hardest part: grinding the beans.  Fortunately, pounding the giant mortar and pestle is Zenebe's favorite part, so we made a great team.  (He didn't smash my fingers even once!)  When I ground the beans without his help, my arm was sore for days.  The aroma from crushing freshly roasted beans right under your nose does help take your mind off the ache in your shoulder, however.  

Once the beans are a fine powder (nope, you can't quit when there are still recognizable bean bits in there -- keep pounding!!!), you carefully pour them into the narrow neck of the jebena and give it a swirl.  I still need to work on this skill!  However, if you spill a bunch of grounds, just discretely pick a bit of grass out of your lovely flower arrangement and use it to brush away the evidence!  A real pro will do this step over the flames, but, well, they made me do this away from the fire.

Now you can wait and talk with the visitors while the coffee comes to a boil.  You need to keep the coals hot, because once the coffee pot comes off, there is popcorn to pop!    

You know when the pot is ready when steam is pushing out of both spouts on the jebena.  After it comes off the fire, it needs to sit and allow the grounds to settle while you pop corn!  Once it's popped, sprinkle on a little sugar (NOT salt, that would just be weird, you crazy American).


To serve the coffee, first dump a huge spoonful of sugar in each tiny cup.  Pour the coffee up to the rim of the cup, and then try to stir in the sugar crystals on the bottom without overflowing.  You'd better put that cup on a saucer, because unless you have the superpowers of an Ethiopian woman, you are going to slosh half of the coffee out of the little cup when you try to stand up from that itsy-bitsy stool.



Once everyone has had their first cup, you pour more water back into the jebena and re-brew for the second round, huletenya. Since I was an overly-excited farengi coffee-addict, I used the opportunity to drink a cup of the oily first brew myself, but the polite and respectful Ethiopian ladies always waited till everyone else had at least two cups (if they even had any at all).  I do not have that kind of restraint.   Any of you that have seen that heavenly shimmer on the surface that only comes from the first pour of fresh, fresh coffee know what I am talking about.  It is impossible to resist. Did I mention that Ethiopian women are superheroes of self-sacrifice?

Once the huletenya is served and the popcorn has pretty much all disappeared, it's time for people to move on.  The third round of coffee is euphemistically known as the "blessing" (bereka) but really means "time to go now."  Kindly, you do give a blessing with the third cup, but it is implied that you have worn out your welcome.  Of course the sweet staff at Common River preemptively gave ME the blessing before the awkward third round (maybe also because I took a lot longer to make the coffee than the pros, and nobody wanted to wait for a third batch)!  We all shared wishes for each others' health and happy children and safe travels and future good work, and skipped the sostenya (third round).

Thanks to Dave for photo-documenting!  

The last piece of this project is for me to do the coffee ceremony myself here in Indiana.... but, it's 95 degrees outside right now, people!  There is no freakin' way I'm sitting over a brazier of hot coals, not even for that sweet elixir.  Not till the weather outside approaches anything resembling the Ethiopian highlands.  We also had some glitches in acquiring all the materials needed (a.k.a. the boys exhibited some serious agoraphobia when their blue-eyed, white-skinned mama tried to shop at the rural market and drew almost as big a crowd as the prize roosters. Thus it did not seem worth sacrificing their mental security for that roasting pan.  Of course, now they are fine and I find myself pining over that beautiful big jebena).  Anyway, there will be some Hoosier improvisation for my next coffee ceremony....  I'll keep you posted.