Where did coffee come from?

What is your dopamine booster? Is it someone you love or is it simply… 𝐂𝐎𝐅𝐅𝐄𝐄?! 

What does coffee do to you? Does it make you sing like an unstoppable fan at a Taylor Swift concert?

Or maybe… it makes you dance like an energetic goat – that’s exactly what happened in the Legend of Kaldi, telling us the origin of coffee. This Ethiopian story says that Kaldi was looking for his missing goats only to find them dancing lively after consuming coffee berries! Whether it’s true or not, the Legend of Kaldi from the 9th century makes sense as coffee beans became widely spread across Ethiopia’s neighboring country, Eritrea.

If England has an afternoon tea ceremony, the Ethiopian/Eritrean culture has a traditional coffee ceremony, which is a ritualistic process that involves various steps. Wherever you go in Ethiopia, they have a conventional ceramic coffee pot called 𝙟𝙚𝙗𝙚𝙣𝙖. 

An average coffee drinker drinks a cup of coffee at a time. However in the Ethiopian/Eritrean coffee ceremony, the little cups are usually served three times – and they have their very own names and meanings:

𝗔𝗯𝗼𝗹 is for pleasure.

𝗧𝗼𝗻𝗮 provokes contemplation; and

𝗕𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗸𝗮 is a bestow of blessing.

How lovely it is to attend such a ceremony! It’s not just about drinking coffee – it is a time for you and your loved ones to catch up and reconnect with each other. 

The Ethiopian/Eritrean Traditional Coffee Ceremony Culture proves that quality time with someone we love gives us as much dopamine as coffee does.