Coffee Break (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)

We had been working in Ethiopia for a week when a friend of ours invited us over to his house for a meal and a cup of buna, the Amharic word for coffee. In Ethiopia, coffee is an integral part of the culture, even more than in my hometown, Seattle. A traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony requires special dress, extreme attention to detail, and a reverence for tradition and ritual. Even though we weren’t given an official coffee ceremony, the amount of work that went into our pot of coffee was astounding.