Tour Guide, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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Ethiopia is the motherland of Coffee Arabica. It is endowed with a rich variety of coffee and its diverse origins. Ethiopian coffee is rich with original flavour and aroma because of the geographical (altitude, soil, temperature, rainfall, topography, ecology), genotypic and cultural variety within the country. Coffee has been growing in Ethiopia for thousands of years, in the forests of southwestern highlands. The word coffee derives from Kaffa, name of a place in the South-Western Ethiopian highlands where coffee was first discovered. It is also known to be the first Coffee Arabica exporter in Africa and is currently the fifth-largest coffee producer in the world. In Amharic "buna" means coffee; in the capital city, there are many coffee shoppes also fully traditional coffee bars.
The most famous story was that of the goatherd, Kaldi (who lived around 9th century) who observed his normally docile goats had suddenly behaved exceptionally lively, skipping, rearing and bleating loudly after eating the bright red berries from a shiny dark-leaved shrub nearby and that Kaldi tried a few berries himself and soon felt extraordinary, stimulated or a novel sense of elation. Ethiopian cultural ceremonies and rituals were using the beans in early periods of domestication as a stimulant and special solid food, for instance, the ripe berries were squashed, combined with animal fats and shaped into balls, which can be carried and eaten during the long journey since the time immemorial by Oromo people.