Coffee Culture
A coffee-dyed shawl from Ethiopia’s Sabahar
The Coffee Ritual
It is an honor to be invited to an Ethiopian home to drink coffee. Instead of a hurried mug from a drip machine, it is a languorous affair that can last up to three hours. Preparations start before guests arrive, as the hostess spreads scented grasses and a few yellow flowers on the floor around a traditional low platform called a rekbot. The platform holds an array of little china cups called cini. Next to the cups is always a jebena, a round-bottomed clay coffeepot whose long, narrow neck and arching spout are symbols of this country’s centuries-old coffee culture, dating back over 1000 years according to both tradition and historical documents referring to buna, the Oromiyan word for coffee. Buna is said to be the word that caused this seed to be called a bean. Kaffe buna became ‘coffee bean.’
When guests and family members arrive, green coffee beans are washed and roasted in a shallow pan over an open flame until their aroma fills the air. Fragrant fumes of frankincense and myrrh add to the sensory experience. The hostess grinds the beans in a mortar and pestle and decants them into the jebena. Near-boiling water follows the coffee down its narrow neck. The jebena sits on the flames for a few minutes, allowing time for the coffee to steep. All the while, news of the day passes around the room, along with laughter and friendly chatter and dishes of popcorn, bread, or barley.
When the brew is ready, the hostess lifts the jebena at least a foot over the cini and pours it from the arching spout. It takes practice to pour with grace enough to avoid coffee grounds in the cups or spills on the rekbot. After this first round (abol), the grounds are used again to make a second cup, (tona). The third cup is called baraka, or blessing, and this is the one that brings luck. Guests linger over this cup, enjoying one another’s company, and harkening back to a time when face-to-face conversation felt more compelling than email and Instagram.
Cash Crop
Though central to traditional Ethiopian domestic life, coffee’s importance here goes beyond ritual and human contact. Nearly half of the country’s exports come from coffee, with over fifteen million Ethiopians involved in farming and processing. As the top producer of coffee in Africa, and fifth in the world, 95 percent of Ethiopia’s coffee is shade-grown on small farms in the highlands.[1] Scientists predict that climate change could diminish these coffee yields by as much as 60 percent by the end of our century.[2]
A New Role for Coffee
Given coffee’s importance, it’s interesting that its use as a dyestuff seems to have arrived only recently. Sabahar, a fifteen-year-old fair trade textile organization, tints Ethiopian-grown silk a lovely light beige using alum as a mordant, and olive green using copper sulfate. Sabahar founder Kathy Marshall, a twenty-year resident of Ethiopia, tells us, “I have never heard of people using coffee for dyeing here. In fact, I can’t really remember how we first tried it. Maybe I spilled some on a white shirt and realized it wouldn’t wash out.” Coffee is one of several natural dyestuffs in use at Sabahar,[3] joined by marigolds, onionskins, tea, safflower, and cochineal, which has officially attained the status of invasive pest in Ethiopia because of its overwhelming infestation of cactus ecosystems in the northernmost part of the country.
Traditional clothing in Ethiopia is predominantly white or off-white, with color appearing only at edges or borders. The beauty of handspun cotton, and now silk, predominates. Sabahar’s large network of women in Addis Ababa spins natural fibers into fine thread, which is then woven by an atelier of eighty-five weavers.
“Hand spinning and weaving, century-old skills, were once highly respected. However, this craft is slowly disappearing in the face of manufactured imports. We are working to bring artisans back and preserve Ethiopia’s rich textile tradition by introducing their beautiful work to the global market,” Kathy explains. “Our cloth is made with care by people we care about, and we think it shows.”
[1]https://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent%20GAIN%20Publications/Coffee%20Annual_Addis%20Ababa_Ethiopia_6-4-2013.pdf
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/06/19/533538555/ethiopias-coffee-farmers-are-on-the-front-lines-of-climate-change
[3] In addition to natural dyes, Sabahar also uses AZO-free and REACH certified synthetics.