The Coffee Kids.... Are coming!!
Let’s Have Coffee…let’s have wisdom…let’s have compassion!!
Coffee is an important cash crop. Popularly known as the "wonder bean”, it constitutes the second biggest international export commodity after petroleum. It is also the means of livelihood for millions of people around the world.
An interesting question to pose to purported coffee enthusiasts is where their favourite beverage originated from. They usually look confused and, when pressed, name a Latin American country. Whenever I hear them answer this question as Colombia or Brazil, they make me angry because, coffee Arabica, the species that produces all fine coffee with the best natural flavours originated in the highland forests of South Western Ethiopia, in the horn of Africa.
Our country is the the home of the best aroma and blend of coffee: Harar,Yirga cheffee,Limu , Sidamo. Jimma and many others… “How come they didn’t mention my country”, I ask my self. Do they even know my country produces coffee? Do they still know how many people are dependent on this coffee? I really doubt, …I am not sure,…I don’t know.
There are so many questions that circle my mind whenever I thought about this. But there is one question that always makes me wonder a lot. Do they know how many kids across the world are dependent on coffee when they buy & trade coffee? I guess not. Do they know how many kids across the world are dependent on coffee when they set quotas & fix prices of coffee? I suspect not.
“Do you know?” Not many people have answers to this question. But I want all of you to know the answer and that’s why I am standing in front of you today to tell you my story as one of the kid’s of coffee.
Dear respectable Ladies & Gentlemen Of the coffee Ceremony!!
I was born in Jimma, which is one of the places where coffee grows wild in the middle of the forest. My mom has been working in the coffee business for over two decades. She knows every little detail about coffee.
Being her daughter helped me know much about coffee. How it is planted; how it is harvested, processed, & tasted; how it is traded and exported. My uncles are also coffee Traders. Are not I, a coffee kid then? Wait a minute.
Above all, my grandfather was a farmer. A farmer with a large farm and with a great wealth. His farm was covered by coffee tree from one end to the other. He took care of the land more like his children. Because his land was the only income to his family, the only means for his kid’s education, and the only means for his family’s sustainable life.
Coffee was the income that got food on the table but when the season was unfavourable, the prices fluctuate against them, and their income dwindles.
Watching these variations of Mother Nature my father and many of my father’s friends and neighbours had a dream:- a dream of breaking the vicious cycle of poverty pungent in rural Ethiopia. As one of the lucky few, my father’s dream to be an engineer, to get the needed technology & water to the coffee trees every time became a reality, …He went to school, …to University and even Oversees and now he helps a lot of farmers.
Coming from this family, which is associated with coffee directly makes me one of the kids of coffee. Doesn’t it? And there are a lot of children whose education, health, shelter and food depends on people they have never heard about. Children with dreams of being a doctor, an engineer or a president. Children who can change our country, and even the world. Children who can erase our countries last name, which is “ POOR OF POOR”
Dear esteemed members of the “Coffee Family!!
I don’t actually remember when, but once some one told me “the best thing you can give to a person is hope”. So, think when you are buying a truck of coffee to how many children your giving hope too. To how many children you’re giving a chance to a better health, a chance to a better education, a chance to be a great person that could help this country. And this is what we need: -To help raise children with vision.
And remember these children have dreams only because of the coffee, because of the coffee tree in front of their houses, because of the tree they see on their way to school. Remember that bush under the shade of the natural forest which bears the beans we all cherish and depend on is their last resort.
So, me, I love coffee. It gives me hope. It tells me never to quiet when things are not good. It tells me that, if we help each other we could get anywhere. It tells me, if we work hard we could give hope to others.
So I want to be a farmer. A farmer of coffee, a farmer of “THE GREEN GOLD”. A farmer who can give a lot to his country. A farmer who can give hope to children that any thing is possible.
So all of you people that are families of “COFFEE”, all of you across the horizon, who are buying and selling coffee, the dream you gave to me is wordless; the courage you gave to me is measureless and I hope some day, God of coffee willing, we all could sit together around a big coffee ceremony and have a toast of coffee for each other.“May the almighty be with all of us in every thing we do and in every thing we say”
Dear Honourable Guests & Participants!
Finally, with a little bit of luck and the support of the “Coffee family”, I have come this far. Further coffee kids are coming as well. The others are thinking the same also.
As a result, I urge you all to agree to support, help, and facilitate this journey and the hope to celebrate their homecoming for the better.
Let’s Have Coffee…let’s have wisdom…let’s have compassion!!
Thank you all!!
Anita Etafa
Grade 11,
STEPS School, Addis Ababa
2007/8
