By Benadeta Mwaura - Reporter
Kenya, 20 November 2025 - I come from a family of farmers.
I grew up surrounded by coffee, literally.
Our compound was ringed with rows of coffee bushes, and during the high and low seasons, we would pick cherries together as a family.
My father owned a coffee-crushing machine sheltered in a structure at the corner of the farm. Beneath it were several large, dam-like pods that collected water.
For us children, those pods doubled as swimming pools whenever there were no coffee activities going on.
The entire set-up was built for one purpose: to handle the full journey of the bean, picking, crushing, drying, and even the early stages of packaging. It was our little world, and coffee was at the center of it.
But there was something unique that my mother did, something I rarely saw in other homesteads. She would take a handful of dried coffee beans, pour them onto a heavy iron pan, and roast them over a steady fire until they turned deep, shiny black.
Then she would crush them using a long, traditional mortar or kinu, the one with the heavy wooden pestle thickened at one end. I used to watch her, envy her strength, admire her patience, and marvel at how she never seemed to tire.
That’s how my siblings and I were introduced to coffee at a very tender age, through the aroma of fresh roasting beans and the rhythmic pounding of the kinu.
For the longest time, I didn’t know other coffees existed.
I had no idea about “flavour profiles,” “notes,” or the idea that different countries grow different types of beans.
In school we learned that Africa was among the world’s greatest producers, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and even the DRC, each with its distinct flavor, soil richness, altitude, and heritage.
But personally, I only knew one thing: my mother’s coffee. Roasted with love, crushed by hand, and brewed with a warmth that tasted like home. So I never bothered to try anything else.
Until Moyale Happened
Recently, during a work trip to Moyale, the bustling border between Kenya and Ethiopia, something shifted. I walked into a small restaurant for breakfast.
Before I could even find a seat, the smell hit me, a deep, earthy aroma so intense that I could almost taste it in the air. It was thick, warm, and strangely comforting. You know those smells that pull you in by force? That was it.
Then I saw them: Ethiopian coffee pots and artifacts neatly arranged across the room. Some pots, the traditional jebena, sat over charcoal, slowly brewing thick black coffee that kept bubbling with purpose. Others were placed on woven mats on the floor, surrounded by cups, incense, and decorations that turned the entire corner into a sacred space. It was beautiful. It was inviting. And it whispered stories.
My colleague, who was familiar with the place, ordered first.
“White or black?” he was asked.
“White,” he said.
To my surprise, white coffee wasn’t just milk with a dash of coffee. They filled his glass three-quarters with milk, then topped it up with the concentrated brew from the pot on the charcoal. The aroma was so strong it wrapped itself around my senses.
Now my curiosity was fully awake. I ordered mine black, expecting the usual large Kenyan mug of black tea-like coffee. Instead, they brought it in a tiny cup, thick, almost syrupy, and smelling like a whole universe of flavour.
My colleague warned me, half laughing: “If you’re not ready, don’t drink it. Ethiopian black coffee is not for the faint-hearted.”
But of course I was ready.
When I took the first sip… my taste buds jumped. It felt like someone had injected a catalyst directly into my brain. My eyes literally widened. The richness, the depth, the boldness, it was unlike anything I had ever tasted.
Better than my mother’s? I whispered that question silently to myself.
There is a saying in my mother tongue:
“If you don’t travel, you will always think your mother’s cooking is the best.”
That day, I understood it deeply.
Let’s Talk About This Ethiopian Coffee
Ethiopian coffee isn’t just a drink, it’s a heritage, a ceremony, a national identity. Ethiopia is widely recognised as the birthplace of Arabica coffee, with more than 6,000 indigenous coffee varieties (far more than any other country).
Its flavours are naturally complex: fruity, floral, spicy, depending on where it is grown.
Coffee is prepared through the traditional Buna ceremony, I should attend one soon, where beans are roasted fresh, ground by hand, and brewed slowly in a jebena. It is communal, spiritual, and intentionally slow.
Compared to Kenyan coffee, which is famous for its bright acidity, berry-like flavours, and clean finish, Ethiopian coffee tastes deeper, older, earthier, like it carries the memory of centuries.
Kenyan coffee dances.
Ethiopian coffee meditates.
One wakes you up.
The other awakens something inside you.
Cultural Significance of Ethiopian Coffee
In Ethiopia, coffee is far more than a drink, it is a rhythm of life, a ceremony, a language of connection. Every cup carries centuries of tradition, carried through generations like a treasured heirloom. Coffee is believed to have been discovered here, in the highlands of Kaffa, and Ethiopians treat it with the reverence of something sacred.
Coffee is woven into the social fabric of everyday life. It is how families bond, how neighbors reconcile, how communities celebrate, and how visitors are honoured. To be invited for a coffee ceremony is not just a social gesture; it is a sign of respect, friendship, and belonging.
The slow, deliberate process, from washing the beans, roasting them over an open flame, crushing them by hand, brewing them in a jebena, and finally sharing three rounds of steaming cups, symbolises patience, generosity, and togetherness. Each round has meaning: abol for acceptance, tona for transformation, and baraka for blessing.
In many households, the smell of freshly roasted beans is the beginning of a conversation. Stories flow as freely as the coffee itself.
Children learn values around the ceremony, women uphold its artistry, and elders use it to pass wisdom from one generation to the next.
Even beyond the home, coffee shapes identity.
It influences folklore and traditional rites. Markets bustle with traders selling beans from regions like Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, Guji, and Harrar, each with a flavour profile as distinct as the people who grow it. Festivals celebrate harvest seasons. Entire livelihoods depend on it.
To drink Ethiopian coffee is to experience a nation’s soul, a connection to its history, its resilience, and its warmth.
Every sip is an invitation into a story that began hundreds of years ago and still continues, cup after cup.
And that tiny cup in at the Kenyan-Ethiopian Border? It opened a whole new chapter for me, a discovery I didn’t even know I needed.
