Chapter 8
Back to Addis
On our backward route we slept in a relatively luxury place of a hotel for foreign guests in the town of Nazreth. The next day before noon we were in the capital.
My relationship with my boss has always been good, but after that trip we became real friends. They visited us in our apartment and we did it at their house. I could see then how the unique Ethiopian coffee -- bunna in Amharic -- was prepared.
Their servant, a young girl, put raw coffee beans on a round metal plate and laid it above embers in a charcoal burning stove. The plate was supported by a ring fastened to the stove four inches above embers. She aired the fire with a fan and stirred the beans by a wooden spoon. In about ten minutes coffee has been roasted ready. All this has been done on the floor of their fireplace and smoke went out through the chimney.
Roasted beans still hot have been smashed in a wooden mortar, ground coffee was poured into a ceramic percolator. It looked like a sampling tube for wines – without hole on its bottom –, with a ball of about two pints in volume and a narrow long neck with a pitcher mouth and a handle on its neck. It was made of black ceramics. On top of ground coffee a needed quantity of water has been poured, and the device was put directly on embers within the metal ring.
Soon water came to boil and it let out steam at the top. The percolator was put aside on a textile ring – similar to those for carrying loads on heads of women in some countries – and its opening closed by a piece of corn cob core. Coffee has been poured into cups after 15 minutes.
In our country coffee is a culture. We have taken it first from Turks during their 150-year rule here, repeatedly from Italians in modern times. Italians had learned this trade in Ethiopia. I have never tasted better coffee than that in Ethiopia.
Coffee originated in that country. On its western part there is a county (better to say kingdom) called Kaffa and the name of coffee comes from "Kaffa drink”. The story of coffee begins with Ethiopians becoming Coptic Christians in the 4th century. There were monks living in monasteries. In the western humid country, where even rain forests survived until now, coffee grows by itself. It is not planted, it is only picked. Monks became aware that, when they stayed at a certain place with their goats, their animals would not sleep all night. They found that a certain bush was responsible. When they needed it for praying all night, they chewed it and it worked. Only it had a very bad taste. Trying first the berries of the bush, its seeds raw and roasted, they invented coffee at last.
The Bekeles had many children, their eldest about the age of my son, smallest still nursing. She was born after my arrival there. They had two cars, both very old. His wife Woizero (Mrs) Wodere used a mini Morris for purposes of hers and the children’s. The husband had a Volkswagen Variant, but as he has never had enough funds to have it repaired properly, now and then it was out-of-order.
Our work routine has been to start at 9 a.m., we were to go to take lunch from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and leave for home at 6 p.m. When he did not have his car with him, we went to take lunch at my home together or in a small local food restaurant called "Bunna Beit” (Coffee House). When we ate at my home, it has always been a risk. My wife could cook well, but at a changing level of quality. Before my mission we shared the kitchen at home and more complicated meals we prepared together.
Just the first day after her arrival she was doing her cooking, I asked her to prepare mango soup. I showed her the mangoes, also some papayas, telling her, we would eat papayas after lunch. At home eating soup I spotted all mangoes in the basket.
"Did you not use all the mangoes?” I asked her.
"But I did”, she answered.
"I see mangoes there.”
"Are they not papayas?”
Well, she prepared the soup from papayas.
I could rely on Bekele in all cases. Once our mother at home made a mistake and I did not get any salary that month. It was the hardest as I bought something and there was no reserve on my account. I did not get any help from my compatriots. I turned to Bekele at last and he gave me a loan of 200 birrs (100 dollars). For a month we lived on that money and only ate potatoes.
Our friendship with him did not go unnoticed by the group of our experts, they were looking on me like on a special animal. It has not been fashionable to keep contact with anybody outside the closed group of national experts and diplomats. The only exceptions have been high society contacts with American, French or British persons, mainly UNIDO experts. But it has never been heard of taking on a local.
To keep experts occupied within their own circles there were regular events either on the premises of the embassy, moved during my first year from a relatively well available place to a far-away site in completely tin-town surroundings, or at the residence of the ambassador. There were always ample drinks and most of the people were satisfied with these high-society events.
At first I enjoyed them, too, but soon learned that they were advantageous only for the snobbish.