The Origin of Coffee

There are a lot of stories about how humans first discovered coffee. All of the stories are apocryphal no one really knows when coffee drinking started. However, that doesn’t make the stories less entertaining. Our favorite story is a variation of the dancing goats story.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a land we now call Ethiopia, there was a goatherd named Kalidi. Every day he took his goats out from his village to forage in the brush. One day he noticed that the goats were eating red berries from a bush. He also noticed that after they ate the berries that the goats started dancing and jumping around.

Being inquisitive, Kalidi ate some of the berries. Then he started jumping round and dancing with the goats. Since it was more fun to dance with the goats then just watch them eat, he took them to the red berry bushes every day.

However, Kalidi started to worry that maybe he was doing something sinful. So he went to the Iman’s house before prayers, told him what he was doing and showed him the berries. The Iman said the beans were from the devil and threw the berries into the fireplace. He castigated Kalidi for being sinful.

While the Iman was laying it on Kalidi, the servants noticed this amazing smell coming from the fireplace. They investigated and found the roasted beans. One of them swept the beans into a mortar and ground them up. He then poured hot water on the grounds and tasted it. Since it was time for prayers the Iman’s house was filled with the villagers. The servant passed the drink around to the villagers.

After the Iman had finished with Kalidi, he began the prayer service. During the service he noticed a marvelous thing. None of the villagers fell asleep. He paused in his sermon and announced that he had discovered a wonderful gift from God and that, henceforth, before every prayer service he would be serving this new drink which he had discovered.