The Rainbow

Wild coffee by Jan Schormann



Wild coffee II by Jan Schromann

In the forest
Coffee enjoys its personal rainbow of colours. It starts at harvest time, with red dots on the background of the green forest.Then, one by one, the beans get inside the brown basket used by the locals for harvesting.

Generous by Ioana Muntenescu



So many reasons to be happy by Ioana Muntenescu

Travelling
Later on the yellow basket (zambilo in Amharic) will embrace the red, ripe coffee beans on their way home, through the village, to the market.

After drying in the sun on a wide, hand made bamboo bed, the coffee fruits get a more intense red. Soon they will start their journey to special stations where they will be dehulled.
When the peel has been removed they look green again, like in their infancy in the forest.

Lying in the sun by Jan Schormann

The coffee ceremony
The women in the family roast the coffee on a plate above the fire and give it the colour of patience and warmth. The coffee ceremony is a process of getting together, of sharing time, not consuming it. It can also be the right time to make some music: the girls assist the mother, clap their hands and bring on the rhythm of coffee making.
The coffee ceremony is about natural beauty. The ladies of the house pick up flowers and place them around the coffee table, for decoration. The guests enjoy now a private, indoor rainbow of colours.

Coffee Ceremony by Jan Schormann

The dark brown coffee gets much of its intensity by contrast with the white clothes the local ladies wear with genuine elegance. By candle light you have time to recollect for a few moments the journey of the coffee beans: protected by the shaded mountain rainforest, basking in the sun on bamboo beds, roasted on a metal plate inside the tukul…
What turns this daily process into a ceremony, besides the beautiful flowers and the dressing up? It is the generous gesture of offering the first ‘touch’ of the freshly roasted coffee beans to the guest or to the head of the family. This first encounter with the aroma of wild coffee is a gift offered by the ladies, a sign of being welcomed and recognized as a friend.

And then one day when it happens to rain, a rainbow in the sky smiles to all the colours that coffee can take, down there, on the earth of Kafa.



The Rainbow by Ioana Muntenescu