Coffee

Drinking coffee before breakfast was a daily routine for my parents.

Every morning I woke up, the aroma of coffee wafted into my nose.

Coffee never really tasted good. I would drink it just to keep myself awake when I was studying for exams in junior high school.

As a university student, I would go to a chain coffee shop, with a paperback book in hand, frittering away hours and hours with nothing else to do.

But coffee was always somewhere close by.

After graduating from university, I worked night shifts at a restaurant. The job was fun and rewarding. But keeping odd hours wasn’t for me.

Every now and then, I dropped by a neighborhood coffee shop managed by a man of peculiar idiosyncrasies.

 I wasn’t at all the most discerning when it came to tastes. But every time, he served me a different flannel drip coffee.

When I found a job advert for a coffee shop of the same name, I wasted no time in dialing the number.

During my training period, I had to drink close to 20 different coffees day after day. All this time, my stomach was full of liquids that tasted the same.

“This tastes like lemon cream!”

One day, one coffee sent shock waves through me.

It was clearly different from any other coffees I’d had before.

The coffee I drank that time was

Ethiopia washed.

Ethiopia washed has been my favorite to this day. It is the reason I am doing what I do today.

Now, I have a chance to visit Ethiopia.

I wonder how I feel, what I think about, when I land at an airport and arrive at coffee farms.

 I feel something is about to start.