- WARNING! i am barely proofreading this as dinner is in 5 minutes. excuse gramatical mistakes and typos. also the spell check is not working… boo
Hello all!
I must apologize for my late contact as this is the first chance i have been able to actually connect to gmail (although my work email is still a lost cause). Thanks USAID for puting us up at a 4 star hotell in Addis Ababa right.
Also, this is ment to be a snapshot of the trip thus far as i will get into much more detail on my return to the states.
Anyways there has been so much going on i do not no were to begin…. well i guess the beginning… so here it goes
I arived in Addis Ababa, the capitol of Ethiopia and located almost dead center of the country, the morning of the 18th at 3:00am. Met up with the rest of the group at 7:00, yeah , 4 hours of sleep after 28 hours of transit and jet lag. Ouch! We left in a tour bus headed to Dira Dawa that morning.
Dira Dawa is about a 8 hour drive (unless Dante from DTC is driving, then its more like 5 1/2) from Addis to the north east. The city is located about an hour down the mountain from Harar. Dira Dawa was never actualy supposed to be a city. It happened around the turn of the century when the French were building a railway from Addis wich was supposed to run to Harar (at the time a very important center for trade). Mind you, Harar is located at about 1900 meters abouve sea level, so sort of at the last minute there were some internal disputes and the french decided to cut the line short because it was too high, thus establishing Dira Dawa.
note: The French traded ethiopia the railroad for controll of their major port on the red sea, Djaboti. (sp?) crooked French.
I zoned out for most of the drive into sort of a sureal dream reality. Partly due to the lack of sleep and jetlag, and partly due to the fact that I was actually in ethiopia! I remember 3 things… 1) Burger Queen 2) In the morning, the locals stand around. in the afternoon, they sit around. and in the evening they lay around. (a huge exageration but an observation none the less… i blame delerium) 3) Barefoot is very famose in Korea. No joke or exageration!
We arive in Dira Dawa and I finally get to meet the guests. An extremely notable and knowlageble group of people. Roasters from the US, Greace and Korea, Importers from Tiwaan, Japan, Korea, US, and of corse exporters, farm union organisers, and producers from Ethiopia and one from Kenya and Colombia. (i am forgetting some i am sure)
The next morning the roundtable conference begins. Oh yeah! some of you may not know what the Harar Rennisance 3rd Ethiopian Roundtable Conference is. In a nutshell it is a conferance set up by Boot Coffee, Fintrack (google it!) funded by USAID (google it!). to bring coffee profesionals from all over the world togeather to network, create relationships, and to adress issues and communicate expectations directly to each other. This year’s focus was on Harar and more specificaly what happend to it as in the last ten years the quality and reputation of Harar coffees have deminished due to factors in which i will get into with more detatil later.
…..the conference continues for two days….
on the second day, we cup 25 Harar coffees, all from exporters present at the conferance, for the most part sub par, and some bad, but i have kept the contact information of those wich were good…. specialty coffee in Harar it seams is an interisting thing, again elaboration soon.
That evening we go see a man just outside of the gates of the walled city of Harar feed spotted Hyenas, very creapy creaturs, some of the most beuty evil can get. This is a newer tradition meant to awe the ‘forengies’, or french (all foreghn people, white, asian, latino, whatever) as the locals call us. i was hoping it was some sort of Harari sorcerers trick dating back to before the Ethiopian dark ages but what can you do. it was still amazing!
At dinner, we meet two Japanese fellows who own a coffee house/ roastery (but not exactly) outside of osaka. These maniacs had flewn into Addis with there crappy Giant mountain bikes and road them all the way down to Yirgacheffe and back to Addis, a six hour car ride, then all the way ur to harar, wich is something like a 12 thousand meter clime into the maountains. Shit! Not to mention it is 95% desert! MADMEN!
Yesterday, we visited a coffee farm. Can i say that again? An ETHIOPIAN COFFEE FARM! The birthplace of coffee guys! Although not our coffee, wich comes tomorrow!!!!, coffee trees nonetheless. It fascinates me how on close inspection the trees seem out of place in such a dry climate, even durring growing season. Coffee tree leaves are dark green and have a centimeter point on the ends to drain water. I believe this is usually an adaptation of rainforest plants?… but i am probibly wrong. The first coffee trees, or ‘Kafa Buna’, grew wild in Kafa Ethiopia, more or less Yirgacheffe, wich is a more tropical climate. Harar is the First region of Ethiopia to process a natural coffee of export quality do to its dry climate. All of the natural Sidamos and Yirgacheffes, Limus, Jimmas, Wollegas and such were born because of the popularity of Harar coffees original popularity and later do to its decline in quality.
The woman who tended the coffee trees prepared a coffee cerimony for us. Nothin like the Ethiopian coffee cerimonies you get in the states, this was actually good. She pullped and washed the cherries there just before roasting them. The whole process took about an hour and a half. We sat around drinking her coffee and chewing chat before making our way back to the bus.
Chat is an indiginous plant that grows in and around the mountains surrounding Harar. It has a slight stimulating and dreamlike effect due to small levels of anphetemeans found somewhere in its cellular structure. Chat is a detremental thing to coffee in Harar because it takes no pocessing, the trees are easier to maintain, pays alot more than coffee on the middle eastern market, and is elegal in Saudi Arabia, there largest import country, where it brings in a huge price on the black market. Many farmers are uprooting there coffee trees and planting chat. Tears :(
So that kind of brings us up to speed on the trip so far. Tomarrow i am headed with Dante, the manager of Dominion Trading Companies washing station in Yirgacheffee, to visit the washing station and some of the 1500 surrounding farms. i can not express my excitement as i type those words. the actual farmers who grew our coffee!
On Wednesday i will be cupping lots with Abraham from Trabocca, Getachew from ITS, and a farm owner named Bazeb from Jimma. I hope to find some amazing and available lots of natural coffee from within this group and bring back samples to roast in the states.
I hope this email reaches you all well and in high sperits,
More soon!
Christian
p.s. the possability of me connecting to the web at the washing station may be slight so i will continue when i return to Addis.
p.p.s. *
– Christian Rotsko Roast Master General