C H U C K ADAM S
WITH THE
MOTHER
COFFEE
TREE
COFFEA ARABICA
PHOTO BY CHUCK ADAMS
tourist-class services and amenities. The tourists who do
pass through the region are as lively as blow-up dolls,
staring out the windows of their rented Land Cruisers as
they watch Ethiopia go by outside. I often feel I’m not the
first white man Kafa villagers have ever seen, but certainly
the first one to say hello and ask them if their families are
at peace.
The glut of package tourists has more to do with
infrastructure and development than a preference for
luxury. Arriving in the regional capital of Bonga, the site of
a national coffee museum under construction, independent
travelers simply wouldn’t know where, or how, to start
exploring. In the area there are spectacular waterfalls,
natural bridges, hot springs, famous coffee and tea
plantations, cultural villages and so-called coffee trails …
but no organized way to visit these places without prior
arrangement with tour operators in Addis Ababa.
But all new destinations begin without tourist
infrastructure and a population who rarely sees a foreigner.
These challenges, however, can be met and overcome. (Or,
in the parlance of Eden-seeking backpackers the world
over, what was once unique and charming about a place will
be anthologized, mythologized, marketed and then
bulldozed.) This is allegedly what the Kafa region of
Ethiopia is hoping to do, taking steps toward development
without sacrificing that off-the-beaten-path allure.
And so this is why I crossed a 60-foot deep gorge
walking on nothing more than four mud-slick logs: To see
what Mother Coffee had to offer.
At dawn, Laura Harrington, another Peace Corps
volunteer, and I gulped down tea at a café in Bonga, bought
some bread for a snack and hopped inside the Kafa Zone’s
SUV. We picked up Heyland and Ohsoon Yun, a South
Korean coffee tourism Ph.D. student, at the K.D.P. Guest
House, a scenic lodge on the outskirts of Bonga catering to
package tourists and researchers.
The morning started off fog-shrouded and dewy, the
thermometer reading a solid 62 degrees F and climbing.
The first leg of the trail to Mother Coffee is, thankfully, all
downhill for 30 minutes to a remarkable natural bridge
where a jungle river tunnels underground for about 50
meters. The mist rising out of the forest looked like clouds
being woken up and rolled out of bed.
We decamped under the natural bridge for photos.
Alarmed bats swooped from niche to niche. The rocks were
slick and made for treacherous climbing next to the rain-
swollen whitewater. This, I mused, could easily pass for the
unexplored wilds of the Congo. Thought Ethiopia was all
barren deserts? Think again.
In June 2010, huge tracts of the remaining wild forests
of Kafa were designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in
honor of its intact biodiversity and unique cultural heritage
12 MAY 24, 2012
EUGENE WEEKLY
as the origin of coffea Arabica. (See, even UNESCO says
it’s true!) However, international protection does not
automatically mean the forest will be preserved. Yun, the
coffee tourism doctoral student, had sharp words to discuss
with our guide about illegal wood harvesting she witnessed
in the region. She admonished him to get his government to
set up more roadside inspections.
The next segment of trail took us out of the “core” zone
of the Biosphere Reserve and into the “transitional” zone of
mixed farmland, forest-in-repair and wild coffee cultivation.
We met a local farmer, and our guide translated a question
Yun had about a type of bush that yields a fruit very similar
to coffee. Dubbed “yayo” in the local Kafinoono language,
Yun believes this plant to be a predecessor to coffea
Arabica. In her words, it’s the “missing link” of coffee
evolution. The farmer disappeared into his hut and returned
with a handful of yayo beans. Yun snapped photos of the
beans and bagged them up for later research.
Our guide, Alemayahu, wore nothing but a white T-shirt,
jeans, and sneakers. He carried a journal that he never once
cracked open. Traveling light and fast, he didn’t even bring
water. This is maybe the reason he was far ahead of us,
beckoning for us to hurry up. I kept worrying we’d reach a
fork in the trail, Alemayahu would go to the left and the rest
of us would go right, ending up in South Sudan.
Thankfully he stopped at every major trail hazard, such
as the tree-bridge, the mud-slick scramble up a ridge and
the small village in a clearing, where farmers, children and
goats stopped what little tasks they were occupied with to
stare at us. Luckily, I’d picked up enough Kafinoono
greetings to assure them our presence was friendly.
The extended family occupying this clearing are the sole
caretakers of Mother Coffee, assuring its location goes
unmarked, unharmed and unknown to all except those with
the best intentions. Being with a government official
helped, and before long we were pointed in the right
direction, taking an abrupt left-turn off the main trail and
into a dense thicket of wild coffee trees.
After a few minutes walk down a game trail our guide
exclaimed and pointed out the Mother Coffee tree, but it
took awhile for us to see it. It took, literally, until we were
an arm’s length away from the tree to recognize its relative
girth, its moss-covered branches, its strange split halfway
up the tree, appearing like two arms reaching for the sky,
before reality sunk in: This is one Mother-Effing Coffee
Tree! Brewed coffee, a commodity that practically made the
modern world what it is today, may have started with this
tree. I kept looking around to see if any goats were
wandering around in a caffeinated buzz …
Like Heyland, the German student, I was also hesitant to
leave the birthplace of coffee, but for different reasons.
Instead of slogging back to the Land Cruiser, dehydrated
and drained, I wanted to rest in the shade of the afternoon
sun and stay the night in the local village. To wake up the
next morning to villagers making the thud-thud-thud sound
of pounding fire-roasted coffee, to drink the traditional
three cups of espresso-like buna and to make the return
journey wide awake and refreshed: These are things
travelers dream of.
Instead we made the four-hour return trip shortly after a
lunch break, tired and delirious with dehydration. Our feet
ached, our brows dripped with sweat as the sun beat down
on us. This was no leisure hike; this was a vision quest.
Black-and-white colobus monkeys tried to urinate on us
from high, twisting welka trees. Shrieking birds with red
bodies and blue wings swooped overhead. An elusive De
Brazza’s monkey, solitary and barking like a dog, gave us a
final send-off.
We made it back to the Land Cruiser just as a rainbow
grew over the biosphere reserve. I’ve heard that some
Ethiopians believe it is bad luck to look at rainbows. I just
hope Ethiopians see the beauty in what they have, preserve
it, manage it and find a way to share it with the world
without compromising it.
There is talk of improving the coffee trails to make them
safer and less steep, of training local forest rangers to act as
guides-for-hire, of setting up villages for trekker
accommodation, all of which is fine and good. But the
ultimate reason any traveler goes anywhere is to be in an
environment unlike any other place on Earth. For now, the
Kafa region of Ethiopia has that unique sense of place. By
the time mass tourism arrives, it’ll hopefully have figured
out the rest.
Chuck Adams is a Peace Corps volunteer currently serving in Ethiopia. He previously
worked for the Northwest Youth Corps, as well as for EW as a writer and calendar
editor. For more information, email chuckwriter@gmail.com
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