Coffee is our bread
Ethiopia’s most prominent industry in transition. More than just a popular drink, it’s a way of life.
by ALLISON HESS | Photojournalist
Richly colorful and traditionally dressed Ethiopian women fill the streets of the merkato with coffee beans up to their knees. This open-air market is the largest in not only Ethiopia but in all of Africa. Men and women work day after day sifting through the uncooked beans that will soon be sent off to factories or personal shops to be roasted and brewed into one of the most popular goods the country produces.
“If you smell the coffee roast, as you have seen coffee is roasted in every family in Ethiopia,” Tedese Meskela said. “Even if he doesn’t know the people, since he has smelled the coffee, he has the right to come in and sit down and drink the coffee there.”
It’s argued that Ethiopia’s coffee beans are among the best in the world, but many producers struggle to earn a living wage from them. Ethiopia is known as the birthplace of coffee. Legend suggests that Kaldi, an Ethiopian goat herder, roasted coffee beans for the first time in the 9th century — after he discovered the effect the bean had on his herd. After the grinding and roasting process, he became the first person to drink a cup of coffee.
Before a jebena — a traditional clay coffee pot — is needed, the beans are washed by hand with a back and forth motion, to scrub them against each other. Then, the raw beans are roasted by hand over a small fire on a clay pot and moved evenly with a small wooden stick. Using a clay bowl and mortar, roasted coffee beans are meticulously ground into a fine powder which will be used for freshly steeped coffee. Ethiopian households and businesses consistently feature the traditional coffee ceremony arranged in a corner, with grass lining the floor, and a woman dressed in traditional white garments tending to a jebena.
Traditions, however, have changed since that afternoon with Kaldi and the countryside. Ethiopian culture still revolves around coffee, but the industry struggles to strive. Coffee is a more than $3 billion industry in Ethiopia making it the largest export product from the country. However before building partnerships, such as the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, the country’s coffee industry made itself susceptible to exploitation from around the globe from coffee conglomerates around the west such as Starbucks.
Tedesse Meskela became the face of Ethiopian coffee farmers when he helped found the Oromia Free Farmers Cooperative Union in 1999. The co-op’s goal is to cut out the middleman between coffee farmers and exporters. From women sorting out beans on a conveyor belt in the factory, to men hauling bags of beans over their shoulders and on their heads, this industry has produced more jobs for Ethiopians and has quickened the process of getting the coffee out to buyers.
“A couple of coffee companies sell coffee for two birr [11 cents] or three birr [16 cents] in Ethiopia,” Tedesse said. “Why, for a pound of coffee, we are getting maybe now about 40 birr [two dollars]? We eliminated this chain and tried to sell the coffee and bring back 70 percent of the profits back to the farmers who pick it. And since the establishment, we, our coffee, is exported directly to the coffee buyers all over the world, of which 70 percent is exported to the United States.”
“We [Ethiopia] are the first at producing coffee in Africa and the fifth in the world, you know?” -Tedesse Meskela
In a little more than a decade, the co-op has been able to bypass the middleman to sell directly to buyers all over the world. Cooperative also undergoes what is known as a “cupping process” which determines the quality of the coffee through its body, acidity and flavor. Ladle-like spoons sift the foam off five different cups of coffee. Testers will then use different techniques of tasting, smelling and observing the cups to determine which roast has the perfect flavor they are hoping for.
While the industry as a whole may seem like it is progressing, it’s still leaving many Ethiopians behind other producing countries. Webelem Merne, a coffee shop owner, is one of them. “We [Ethiopia] are the first at producing coffee in Africa and the fifth in the world, you know? So the people that are engaged in coffee in the country is many,” Tedesse said.
Crouched by her coffee table, Webelem humbly shows that in the back of her 16 by 20 square-foot coffee shop is a double-sized bed; only a gold curtain separates her work from her home. Like many women before her, Webelem left Ethiopia five years earlier for a job as a domestic worker in Lebanon, and later, Dubai. “I did not plan on opening a business at the time. But when it came time to sell coffee, I opened it to make money,” Webelem said.
“I want it more than food. I am addicted to it.” -Webelem Merne
Webelem represents the old Ethiopia — the way industry worked before cooperatives. She can’t make enough money to pay off her loan and her rent, but coffee is in her culture and her blood. “It is my mother who taught me everything,” Webelem said. “I learned this from my family. Because coffee is popular and based on my financial status, I decided to start this business.” Webelem roasts her own coffee in her home and shop and then invites people in. The little white cups with red flowers are used and then washed by hand for the next customer to come. This is typical for a coffee shop owner; the coffee is not usually to go like it is at Starbucks. Customers come into the shop, drink their coffee and then leave. “For myself, it is something that makes me very happy. I want it more than food. I am addicted to it,” Webelem explained.
After returning from the Middle East, she has no choice but to make a living on her own. She makes five birr, or about 12 cents, per cup. In order for Webelem to break even with her business she would have to bring in at least 80 birr, the equivalent to about four dollars. Despite long odds, Webelem and Tedesse represent the optimism throughout Ethiopia’s coffee industry. Webelem doesn’t know how her business will survive, but she has faith that something better is to come.•
Edited and designed by Hannah VonGrey.
