All That In A Cup
Photography by Maheder Haileselassie
Words by Sarah Bushra
One of my earliest memories of buna has nothing to do with its taste or smell but with a blurry view of Addis Abeba, a car window scene I had been transfixed with for many early mornings on my drives to school.
The hazy, often deserted view of Addis came to an end with the soundtrack of a coffee song, which played around 8am on the national radio “የኢኮኖሚ ዋልታ ቡና ቡና ፣ የገቢ ምንጫችን ቡና ቡና…” Weekday breakfasts came with a quick coffee ceremony. It was also the only meal all five of us in the family shared together. My father would drive my sister and me to school from our home at Bole Medhanealem to Nazareth School in Amest Kilo. As we got ready for the drive, I would see my father, sipping the last bead of coffee and lingering there in that effervescent drop that brought to life the entire cup, or maybe of all the cups that came before it.
Sunday mornings in Ethiopia, a time when buna can breathe without the restrictions of work week schedules, are a parade of sensorial evocations. A disarray of scents, sounds, and slanted lights glistening. Mild chatters, footsteps rushing up and down staircases, running water splashing into unidentified containers, clanking kitchenware, names being called out in a range of intonations and endearments. But everything falls into a short, expectant silence, when a designated coffee maker drapes carpet on the floor, with practiced ease and deference, as one does when laying a prayer mat.
Coffee ceremony is a staple, a craving, and a delicacy in Ethiopian society. It’s a ritual that mediates between the ubiquitous and the sacrosanct. Buna acts as a vessel to contain the ordinary lives of Ethiopians. Coffee is sustenance for Ethiopia, from its impact on the economy as a cash crop, to its intimate place in social practices. At home, a clay jebena is at the center of a ceremony, elegantly containing the coffee, and precariously placed on top of an open charcoal fire. The coffee ritual holds space for communities, as a depository of stories, the way a wide basin of clay jebena holds a round of drinks for the circle of people present.
Complete with qetema, grass splayed on the ground, and burning etan obscuring the air, a coffee ritual transforms the space it exists in and activates a mythical world. Much like epistolary art, which simultaneously magnifies and diminishes the distance between two people, the scenography of an Ethiopian coffee ceremony both masks and reveals its mysticism. The scent of coffee pulls a community into a ceremonious gathering; its roasting with frankincense travels past fences and in-between crevices, silently summoning neighbors into a midafternoon observance. Women gather to unburden themselves from expected decorum and construct a transient freedom. Tales around a coffee ritual are elaborate. Words are spun liberally with generous use of expressions. The most unusual stories are told, family lines are drawn and identified, new relations are made. Each story gives a glimpse to the contemporary reality of Ethiopians’ social and political stance, which otherwise remains ambiguous and hidden. The unassuming and abundant coffee gatherings are the drivers of change, facilitating honest conversations: social and political urgencies are identified; opportunities are shared; solutions are suggested; advice is given; and criticisms are welcomed. These exchanges might often coalesce into constructive collective actions.
Letter writing invites candor and safety in a folded page, security comes in the adhesive fixing the envelope shut. An Ethiopian coffee ceremony is inherently trustworthy and empathetic, one which nurtures honesty and solidarity in its conversation circles. Accepting a coffee invitation is to actively participate in the collective weaving of intimacy within a temporarily shared space. Centered on care and kindness, the world of a coffee ceremony is the fertile ground on which the performative outside world comes to rest. “Nu buna tetu”. “Come, let’s have coffee”, an offer as enticing as whispering, “I have something to tell you” – an allusion to that tantalizing cusp of becoming clued up on the unknown. Sharing coffee, sitting in a circle at home or across the high tables at Tomoca, is stealing a moment from the ordinary and carving a space to imagine and embody a heightened sense of collective and collaborative existence.
Nu buna tetus, are small, often mobile establishments run by women adept in the skills of making exceptionally good coffee. These are spaces that anchor the unsteady existence of the built environment in a frantically urbanizing city like Addis Abeba. The old is constantly being replaced by the new, by violent disruptions and through gradual passage of time. A longing for the unattainable, for the have-beens and the long-gones, has entrenched nostalgia at the crux of the city’s contemporary social fabric. Coffee is a way to taste these trailing flavors of the past. From the origin stories of coffee beans to the mythical narratives that populate the history of the country is a melancholic nostalgia: tezeta. Coffee safeguards this sentiment by nurturing spaces for collective practice of storytelling. Tezeta lives between each recalling, told and retold in distinct variations. Ethiopian stories have been documented and archived through an enduring medium of oral tradition. The stories gestated, birthed, and nurtured around the coffee drinking culture continue this long-standing tradition.
