Ethiopia Origin Trip 2009

Ethiopia 2009

The third Ethiopian “Harar Renaissance” Rountable Conference was meant to focus on the legacy, history, and current state of the Harar coffee industry. The conference was organized by Boot Coffee Consulting with funding and in collaboration with USAID and Fintrack. It was meant to bring coffee professionals from all over the world together to network, create relationships, and to address issues and communicate expectations directly to one another. This year’s focus was on Harar and more specifically what happened to it as in the last ten years the quality and reputation of Harar coffees have diminished. And of course we would cup the coffees of some of the Harari producers present at the event. We were also scheduled to visit some coffee processing mills and farms in the Harar area. I was in for quite an event.

We had also been in contact with Mike Stemm and Dante Vilone from Dominion Trading Company in Washington and DTC Holdings in Yirgacheffe. We had arranged for me to meet with Dante, who would be attending the conference, and to travel with him to the Yirgacheffe region in southern Ethiopia fom the twenty third to the twenty fifth of February. We would visit the farms and washing station, and meet some of the people who make the great coffee we buy possible. This side trip was extremely important to me as it brings full circle what has always fascinated me about coffee. The hundreds of human hands and minds that touch the coffee before it finally reaches the cup. I felt honored and lucky to be able to get to meet those who the coffee “chain of hands” begin with, the farmers.

… and so it begins… SFO to Bole International Airport … 28 hours and a whole lot of whiskey and bad romantic comedies later….

I arrived in Addis Ababa, the capitol of Ethiopia (located almost dead center of the country) the morning of the eighteenth at three in the morning. Met up with the rest of the group at eight, yeah , four hours of sleep after twenty eight hours of transit and jet lag. Ouch! We left in a tour bus headed to Dire Dawa that morning which is about an eight hour drive (unless Dante is driving, then its more like 5 ½) from Addis to the east. The city is located about an hour down the mountain from Harar. I slept for the majority of the ride and the waking hours were spent zoning out into sort of a surreal dream reality. Partly due to the lack of sleep and jet lag, and partly due to the fact that I was actually in Ethiopia! I was overwhelmed with the scenery and the foreign world around me. Donkeys with water jugs strapped to their backs, bouncing from side to side, goats and cattle wondering lazily in the street, children pointing and screaming at the luxury tour bus in which we were traveling which, by the way, was very comfortable, but I couldn’t help but feel slightly alienated from the world around me. I came all the way to Ethiopia and was watching these peoples lives and the scenery go by like a special on the Discovery Channel. Except instead of a TV screen it was a luxury bus window. We stopped for a break on a lake in the middle of a black desert. There were piles of volcanic rocks for miles covered with almost no vegetation. Right in the middle of this strange landscape was an enormous lake. When I exited the bus to stretch my legs I realized how thankful I was for that luxury bus. The temperature was around one hundred degrees with a very strong wind whipping volcanic soil and sand in my face.

We arrived in Dire Dawa and I finally got to meet all of the guests over a lovely traditional Ethiopian dinner. I was in the company of an extremely notable and knowledgeable group of people, roasters and professional coffee geeks from the US, Greece and Korea, importers from Taiwan, Japan, Korea, US, and of course exporters, farm union organizers, and producers from Ethiopia and a few from Kenya and Colombia. (I am forgetting some I am sure)

The next morning the roundtable conference began.

The presentations were started with the legendary cupper and coffee expert Kenneth Davids speaking of the history and traditions of Harar coffees. He explained that the natural processing method of sun drying the coffee cherries after harvesting was originally started in Harar due to its desert like climate and lack of water. Although this was the traditional method of processing coffee for domestic use, the coffees from outside of Harar were mainly wet processed for export. It wasn’t until the early nineties when the quality of Harar coffees started to fall that other regions in Ethiopia started more commonly offering naturally processed coffees for export. Unfortunately this led to the lower demand of Harar coffee leading to its further decline in popularity throughout the specialty coffee industry. I was discouraged to think that in my short time in the world of coffee I have never had the opportunity to taste “a true Harar Coffee” with its complex citrus acidity, chocolaty body and ripe blueberry aromas.

We started the second day of the conference by cupping twenty five Harar coffees, all from exporters and producers present at the conference. It was fascinating for me to see the faces of the producers as we slurped away and dissected the good and bad points of their coffees. They expressed the same nervousness and excitement as I have experienced when in the room with others are cupping my roasts. The table was for the most part okay, with some bad, and a few excellent samples. All exhibiting some form of the “true Harar taste” but instead of ripe blueberries there were many over fermented prunes and grapes. Instead of clean citrus acidity there was a lot of aggressive citrus peel. I took note of the samples that stood out and had a chance to speak briefly to the producer who’s coffees were exceptional. He proceeded to tell me that the reason his coffees stood out on the table was the care that the farmers took in picking the cherries for processing, and the meticulous attention taken in rotating the cherries while sun drying not to mention the strict hand sorting of the defects post milling. The representative explained that when attention to detail in the processing stages are neglected along with sloppy transportation of the processed and unprocessed cherries, decline in quality (as expressed in the conference) is more common. He then explained to me that his coffee was all for export to Saudi Arabia, the largest importing country of Harar Coffees. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the people and the the hands that mean everything to this product, and thinking that we are getting second dibs.

After the cupping, we returned to the conference room and commenced with the lectures. Abraham Begashaw from Trabocca spoke of the unique qualities of specialty coffee in Ethiopia and how it differs from the rest of the coffee growing world.  As opposed to the large plantations of coffee found in South and Central America, Ethiopian Coffee falls into three categories, Forest Coffee (encompassing about fifteen percent of all specialty coffee production), semi-forest coffee (about twenty to thirty percent), and garden coffee (about forty percent).  The Yirgacheffe DTC Holdings that we buy is garden coffee. Coffee that is qualified as Garden Coffee is grown by a single family in small plots that along with other local vegetation for there  their own sustainability and consumption.

There was some intense conversation sparked by the last speaker of the conference with the presentation of a man representing the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, or ECX. In a very small nut shell, the ECX is a government run exchange market set up to make the movement of commodity grade coffee from farm to exporter more efficient and transparent. The way it was explained was the coffee from the farm after processing goes to a ECX warehouse in that region. The green coffee is then graded into one of twenty five categories depending on region, process and quality. After being graded, the farmers’ coffee is mixed in with the rest of the coffee in its grade. The coffee is then sold through the central exchange auction system as the generic name of that grade, for instance Yirgacheffe grade A, grade B and so on. There are two ways to sidestep this system, if you are a private producer or a unionized co-op. These examples are meant to cater to the specialty market. What will happen to the farmer who’s crop is some of the most exquisite coffee in the world is taken to the the exchange and lost in the mix of lesser quality from that region. Will that farmer ever be able to get the fair price for his coffee? Barefoot pays an average of 60% more than fair trade prices for our coffees and a high percentage over even the highest grade commodity level coffees. Will these farmers ever be discovered by those of us in the specialty market? What about organic, fair trade, rain forest alliance and other certified coffees? Will they be guaranteed their certification prices when mixed into their government specified grade? What about the transparency of the coffee or all of the programs, non-profits, and private businesses established to raise the quality of coffee to specialty grade at a farm level to ensure the highest prices on the global market? These extremely relevant questions were not acknowledged by the ECX representative. Either that or they are important details that had not yet been worked out within this exchange system that has already been implemented.

That evening we went to see a man just outside of the gates of the walled city of Harar feed spotted Hyenas, very creepy creatures, some of the most beautiful evil can get. This is a newer tradition meant to awe the “Forengies”, or French (all foreign 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!

The next day we piled into the buss and visited a small coffee farm just outside of Harar. It was unreal to me to actually be standing under actual coffee trees. Upon closer inspection of the trees, they seemed out of place in the dry climate of Harar. The leaves of coffee trees are dark green and have about a centimeter “drip tip” at the end. I believe this is an adaptation of plants native to wetter climates evolved to drain water from the surface of the leaves more effectively. But who knows? I am not a botanist. The first coffee trees, or ‘Kaffa Buna’, grew wild in Kaffa Ethiopia, near Yirgacheffe, which is a more tropical climate so this adaptation would make sense.

The farm was tended by a woman who, after a small tour of her trees, performed a coffee ceremony for us. Nothing like the Ethiopian coffee ceremonies you get in the states for the experience, not only was the experience amazing, but the coffee actually tasted good. She first showed us a red pail in which she was soaking sweet potatoes for that evenings dinner. Along with the sweet potatoes, were coffee cherries which had been dried in the sun the day before. She extracted the slimy coffee beans from the soaked cherries and rinsed them with water. She then roasted the coffee beans slowly on a griddle she had bean warming over a small fire, then ground the coffee with a mortar and pestle and brewed it in a carafe called a Gebena and served it to us in demitasse cups with a green sprig of ginger like herb. The whole process took about an hour and a half. We sat around drinking her coffee and chewing Khat before making our way back to the bus.

Khat is an indigenous plant that grows in Ethiopia including the mountains surrounding Harar. It is cultivated domestically for its mild stimulating and dreamlike effect when the leaves are chewed due to small levels of amphetamines. The Khat industry has had drastic detrimental effects on the Harar coffee industry. As opposed to coffee, it requires no processing, the trees are easier to maintain, and pays a lot more than coffee on the middle eastern market. It is illegal in Saudi Arabia, there largest import country, so Khat brings in a huge price on the black market. Because of this, many farmers are uprooting there coffee trees and planting Khat. The fact that Khat is so detrimental to the quality of Harar coffee nagged at my conscience. It somehow seemed sad to me that I was in Harar to learn about Harar coffees and their recent quality issues, sitting at a Harar coffee farm, drinking Harar coffee, and chewing the very drug that was a major player in its decline in popularity and quality.

The next morning, instead of riding in the tour bus with the rest of the group, I decide to catch a ride back to Addis in Dante’s Van with Craig from Dominion Trading Company, and three other local producers. We set out on the long road from Harar at five o’clock in the morning. Seeing the sun rise over the dry peaks of the mountains surrounding Harar was breathtaking. The rays of light cutting through the slight layers of dust was almost biblical in its awe. It also gave light to the women and children who were walking the long road, sometimes as long as ten miles, to the well to carry back the days water. Life starts early in Ethiopia. It enticed me to think of how different these peoples’ lives are than mine. I thought of how spoiled I am. I have a faucet.

As the day progressed, and we descended to the lowlands, the magic of this ancient land revealed itself to me. The landscape is desert-like and seems to go on for miles but is not flat. Huge jagged ravines cut through the earth. Slight rolling hills covered in no vegetation other than small shrubs. Giant black volcanic boulders stick out against the stark beige dusty land. As scorching hot, dusty and dry as this area is, It was booming with life and activity. Baboons sitting under low trees watching the cars go by, huge herds of cattle and Camels are lead, kicking up dust which could be seen for miles across the land are led by nomads. And birds, birds of all kinds of bright colors juxtapose the almost monotonous surroundings. Blue, neon green, red, yellow blurs dart in front of the van as we zip past bicycles, the skeletons of cows and cars, dodging goats and cattle all the while maintaining a steady speed of around seventy five miles per hour.

After being in the van all day, hot sweaty, sun burnt, hair and eyes full of dust and truck exhaust, it was nice to have a warm shower and clean sheets waiting at the four star hotel USAID had put us up at in Addis. The next morning, Dante and I left for Yirgacheffe. Since it was just him and I traveling together this time, it gave me the opportunity to speak with Dante about the origins of DTC Holdings and were exactly he fit into it. It was Dante’s idea to set up a washing station that buys and processed only the best ripest cherries from farmers insuring the highest quality. He is the General Manager of the washing station and makes sure that all operations at the plant are followed out with the highest attention to detail. From all production at the fermentation tanks and de-mucilage, to making sure the records are kept of the quantities of coffee cherries purchased from each farmer. The books are so organized, he explained, that if we give him the lot number printed on the side of the sac of green coffee, he can check the books and tell us exactly which farmer that coffee was grown by. Something to be proud of considering DTC Holdings processes coffee for over fifteen hundred farmers.

We took a road south through the rift valley headed for the Sidama region. The further south we got the more moisture I felt in the air. Surrounded by lakes, the mountains ahead were green, as opposed to the dry beige of the mountains to the east. We ascended through the foothills and it was clear that it is a rare occurrence that these townspeople see “Forengies.” Every person who sees my blinding white arm hanging out of the window yells “you you you” or ” hello” or “va funculu” or any other western phrase they may know. Dante informed me that the avocados from the Sidama region are as good as their coffee and that we must stop at one of the children on the road selling them. As soon as the van stopped we were mobbed by about fifteen kids selling sugar cane, pineapple, and avocados, which grow well in the tropical climate. Before I knew it I had five pineapples and a dozen avocados hurled at me through the open window followed by screams of five birr, ten birr* and about fifty little fingers grabbing for my face and lashing and screaming “Forengie!” Fascinating sales tactics.

At around three in the afternoon Dante pulled the van down a dirt road marked by a rickety old sign reading DTC Holdings. I was giddy with excitement. We had reached the actual washing station and entrance to the farms where the Yirgacheffe coffee I have been roasting for about two years is handled. Harvest season was over and I was just in time to see the last of this years crop drying on raised tables made out of screens and sticks pulled from the surrounding forest. I was surprised to see the green coffee still in the hull as they were drying on the tables. I assumed that the beans were extracted completely before drying, but the green coffee beens, still in their hull, are dried and sorted at the washing station, and then shipped to Addis Ababa for de- hulling. It was also interesting to see that all of the coffee was dried on raised tables. I pictured the coffee being dried on concrete patios as is the norm in the Americas. It was nearing the end of the work day and the workers were covering the beans with yellow tarps to protect them from the evening moisture and morning dew.

Dante had gone off to look over some paperwork and had left me to wander about for a short time by myself. I approached a lean-to like shelter crafted out of sticks against a cinder block building. The shelter was covered in jute sacks to shield the sun. As I neared the shelter, I was overwhelmed with woman and children’s voices singing in perfect harmony. Standing at the entrance, still not able to see what was going on behind the jute covered lean-to, I paused for a moment to absorb the surreal awesomeness of my surroundings. The warm late afternoon sun falling on my skin, with the slight evening breeze cooling the sweat, the sweet grassy smell of the coffee drying on the tables and the singing, almost overwhelming with emotion and harmony instantly gave me the chills. The decibel of there voices drowned out all other sound and thought. I pulled back the flap of jute to reveal about twenty five women and children squatting and sitting on the ground sorting out the remaining defects of the coffee that in about three to six months I will be roasting. I walked through slowly as not to disrupt production, but in a few moments like a chain reaction one person spots me and then another. Almost instantaneously all sorting and singing stopped and fifty eyes were staring at me timidly with intense curiosity. The farm production manager quickly saw this and hurried me on.

Dante gave me a quick tour of the Eco-pulper. A green coffee processing de-mucilage machine designed in Colombia. During the processing process, the Eco-pulper uses 800 gallons of water a day. A vast improvement from the usual 60,000 gallons used to wet process coffee before this technology was introduced. Then it was on to the farms.

We headed east, a short walk toward the forest to a bridge over a small stream. The “bridge” consisted of two extremely flexible logs laying over the stream. It fascinates me still how the farmers can bring there entire seasons crop over these weak logs to the washing station, while I could barely make one pass without losing my balance. At the entrance to the jungle we were greeted by a woman who had been farming coffee for over forty years. I shook her hand and said hello. Her hands were as tough as leather and her fingers were twice the thickness of mine. My hand felt like it would surely be crushed under her genuinely-excited-to-meet-me hand shake. She was extremely proud of her garden of about twenty five coffee trees all perfectly cropped. The surrounding soil was moist and had been weeded with care and precision. She led me by hand along a small path through her garden. She pointed out to me the huge tropical banana trees and bamboo like sugar cane that are grown between small bunches of coffee trees. She pointed out the trees that are used for shade and the perfectly aligned rows of maize and sweet potatoes. Dante then explained to me that there is a variety of vegetation kept on each small farm for a few reasons: Growing coffee is like a part time job, harvest season is only a few months out of the year so they grow the other produce for the local markets, and the maze and sweet potatoes for there own consumption. With the exception of the maize, all of the plants are indigenous to that region and have had a symbiotic relationship for thousands of years. The gardens are like the surrounding jungle but to a smaller scale. The indigenous foliage and banana trees shade the coffee trees from direct sunlight which is necessary for proper growth. The fruit from the coffee cherries intern is composted and used as fertilizer. Each family garden is like its own mini ecosystem. It is no wonder that ninety five percent of all all Ethiopian coffee is naturally organic despite certifications.

Dante guided me into a small clearing and motioned up the slight grade of mountains in the distance, as far as you can see in this direction, he explained, lives all of the fifteen hundred farmers who bring their coffee to the washing station at DTC Holdings. Although I have not experienced coffee plantations in other parts of the world, there is definitely an intriguing personal touch put into these DTC beans. If the average coffee tree produces about one pound of roasted coffee a year, and this woman cared for twenty five coffee trees, then that means she produces about twenty five pounds of roasted coffee a year. In our small 12 kilo roaster, I can roast this woman’s entire annual yield, the majority of her annual income in about twenty minutes.

After about an hour and a half of wandering through the farms, we made our way back to the washing station where I was led to a small hut next to the entrance. My nostrils perked up and I began to salivate a bit as soon as the addictive aroma that my mind and body are trained to recognize crept into my olfactory glands. The resident cook was brewing coffee. Dante, a few others from the washing station and myself sat down after my tour over the fresh coffee. I felt that this was the perfect moment to pass out the bright and shiny packaged half pounds of coffee I had brought as gifts for the farm workers. Dante translated to everyone that this is the coffee they had produced which I had roasted in the U.S. Their eyes lit up and huge grins spread throughout their faces. The cook who was also the resident roaster (although on a griddle not a Probat) cut the bag open with a knife. She closed her eyes and took in the aroma, paused with a confused look on her face, poured some beans into her palm and gave me a crooked glance. She then began in good humor to critique our light roasting style to Dante as he translated to me and the entire group started cracking up with laughter.

The following evening was to be my last in Ethiopia. In Addis Ababa I was treated to dinner by some of the people who had made my stay in Ethiopia the amazing experience it was. The restaurant and bar were on the tenth floor of a building and Azeb Teklay, a producer from the Djima Region, and I were laughing thankfully that we didn’t have to take the stairs which was a rickety looking spiral staircase on the outer wall of the building. We are greeted by Dante, Samson from Anfilo, Getechew from IPS. We conversed about coffee for a while, talked about our paths and how we ended up in this business, whichever end of the industry we were on. I felt honored to be among the people on the other end of the coffee “chain of hands”. I spoke of my experiences and thoughts of the trip and of how much I enjoyed the welcoming attitude and sense of togetherness the people of Ethiopia share. I proceeded to explain to them that at the heart of what makes any trip fulfilling is the people you meet, and that relationships are what make coffee such an amazing product. Without the ones seated at the table eating, drinking and sharing stories with me, the specialty coffee profession would not exist. A melancholy feeling washed over me at the end of the evening as the reality of leaving this enchanting land with these great people set in. Although it was hard to say goodbye, I was filled with a new passion and appreciation for the knowledge, dedication, and hard work these people put into each bean, and how, just like the symbiotic relationships between the plants on the farm at DTC Holdings, each person plays an integral part in the journey of the coffee bean, and without one of these people, the final cup would not be possible. On my way out of the restaurant a sign on the wall caught my eye. Some sort of quote the restaurant had posted. I read the words a few times over. Although a drinking quote, It somehow captured the attitude of how important human relationships are to the world of coffee. “Our Bar is dedicated to those merry souls of other days, who make drinking a pleasure, who achieve contentment long before capacity, and who, whatever they drink, prove able to carry it, enjoy it, and remain Ladies and Gentlemen.”

*The birr is the currency used in Ethiopia.