COFFEE IS FUN

Yigaceffe – an aroma of the fruity apricot, as the word curls around your tongue you taste the smell, Limu – the nose wrinkle in anticipation of chocolate, Harar – you hear Rimbaud say, ‘I alone hold the key to this wild parade’ and feel sun dried cloves on your lips.

Erudite phrases spring from stained lips; “it’s the high altitude that gives it the taste of ripe fruit” or “the lower the altitude the sweeter it is, feel the beat of chocolate notes on your tongue,” “chocolate, this bean was grown at an altitude of 1800 meters, the fruity one, was grown at 2400 meters”. And what about the roast, “good coffee is judged not only by the taste, but also from how it is roasted, the sound of the first crack, the colour of the yellowing process”, “did you roast it for more than fifteen minutes, a dark roast, less flavour, less character, a shorter period, much more of that wild apricot”.

Coffee has become sexy, it is a trendy drink; coffee cafes have sprung up all over Johannesburg where people gather to explore the different flavours of their favourite bean. The trendy imagine that they are Sartre, Almadovar, Mandelstam or Picasso, they gather to say important things: ‘the collapse of capitalism, the development of the inner city, the cinematic art of Anthea Moys sleeping in the wild parks of Jeppe Street, peaceful, surrounded by armed security guards and a baritone voice singing ‘Nessun Dorma’, is the Nazi novel ‘The Kindly Ones’ just bad writing?’ And the ‘ladies that lunch’, those with large income husbands and 2.6 children who are taken care of by domestic workers also imagine and say important things: ‘who married whom, the pro’s and con’s of botox versus the knife, the hard working Malawian in the garden.’ Sexy, the more exclusive the sexier; twelve rand for a good cup of Ethiopian coffee, eighty rand for a cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain; coffee is scarce and expensive, it has status, like wine, the more you know, or pretend to know, the sexier you are.

But for others coffee is merely a legal drug, a necessity in the morning so that they are able to face that tiresome tedious day, if not with excitement then with a certain amount of equanimity. It is a central nervous system stimulant that temporarily wards off drowsiness and restores alertness, it is exhilarating, it makes you witty and cool, it makes you accept the drudgery of work; it is ergogenic as it increases the capacity for mental or physical labor; the artist slowly sips his coffee and writes mellifluous words, the accountant adds up figures and tells you what it is that you want to hear, the worker puts another screw in another hole. Caffeine the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive substance, but unlike many other of these substances it is legal and unregulated, it is drinkable, you pay no penalty for consuming it.

Coffee has an illustrious history and mythological spiritual connections. Ethiopia, the land of highlands and green flowers, a red bean, this is where the original coffee was found; here it is indigenous, endemic. The story of how coffee was discovered begins with Kaldi, an Ethiopian goat herd. One day he felt tired and bored, then, as he sleepily watched his flock, he noticed that one particular goat was friskier than the others. He watched the goat carefully, it would often go to a bush on which red berries grew, then he watched it eat the red beans and it appeared to dance to brisk music played on pearly keys, it was a witching melody. So what, Kaldi thought, what is this dark and impenetrable mystery, and so he bent over and tasted the beans in the cold airless highlands and he too danced and the ferns bent their green foreheads to the wind and the cool breeze stirred the leaves of trees with a rustling identical to the sounds of the silver streams and he grew drunk in his rapture.

Taste the coffee in Bean There (Stanley St, Milpark), Kaldi’s (Jeppe St, Newtown), the Park Café (Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood) and imagine eating a red bean, marvel in the dance of the highland goats, picture the freedom that you have, it runs through your dark viscous blood, through motor neurons in your brain, this is why coffee is sexy, it allows you to hope, it allows you a reverie.

Sarah of Bean There, a trendy coffee shop links the growth of coffee drinking in Johannesburg to the African renaissance. “Coffee can ensure that there is pride in being an African,” she says, “not a South African, but an African pride, we are part of a continent that is recognised for its coffee.” But, in another sentence she acknowledges that coffee drinking in Johannesburg is still a bourgeois, mostly white, past time, “coffee is not expensive, in a relative context,” she says, “but it is white and still associated with the middle class.”

The trendy black Joburger drinks Crystale Champagne and single malt whiskey, the aroma of fine coffee has not yet penetrated this world of wealth. Here it is European chic, not African that pervades the senses, only the white romantic day dreams an African renaissance as he drinks a fine Sidamo coffee at Bean There and wonders about the Nausea that stains his existence.

Bean There is a small shop; most of their income comes from the sale of coffee to restaurants and hotels. “The shop is a place where people can gather,” Sarah continues, “we like to foster a spirit of community, people talking, working on computers, that kind of thing. Also we promote fair trade, for us this means trade not aid, hands up not hands out, and so we travel to Ethiopia and now Rwanda to source our coffee and we make sure that those from whom we purchase it are paid a fair wage, they are not victims trapped in an exploitative system, we respect them. The public must be educated in relation to coffee, it is mysterious, it is exclusive, revolutions have begun in coffee shops, but at the same time they must feel proud that it is the product of fairness.”

Fair trade, what does it mean? Shouldn’t fair trade be a norm, not something that one is self-righteous of, something over and above the ordinary, not a slapped on phrase that makes the product more meaningful, more marketable, more expensive; fair trade, the beginning of a revolution?

What comes to my mind when I drink coffee; the Ethiopian coffee ceremony, Harar, the striking picture of a coffee merchant taken by Rimbaud, the boy genius, the celebrant of Paris. Mostly the women are responsible for the ceremony; they prepare all the items that are necessary for it and lay them out in front of the guests. It is conducted on long green grass spread on the floor, grass brings prosperity, sometimes the petals of flowers are strewn among the glasses. First the green coffee beans are roasted on a steel skillet using a narrow-waisted charcoal burner; the roasted beans are removed from the heat and brought close to the guests so that they can smell the aroma emanating from them. Then frankincense is burnt, the perfume mingles with the scent of the coffee and spiritualise the whole ceremony. Later the roasted coffee beans are put in a clay pot with a round bottom and long skinny spout, a little water is placed in it and the pot is put on the charcoal. When the coffee has boiled the pot is removed from the fire and placed on a circular band of straw so that it may settle. Then people drink. It is said that a transformation of the spirit takes place during the ceremony.

Kaldi’s coffee shop in Newtown and now in downtown Johannesburg, between Delvers and Troye streets, the Ethiopian quarter, has a different ethos. Maybe it is the location and the clientele, maybe it is that Grant was previously involved in the cut and thrust world of coffee trading, “coffee is the second most traded commodity after oil,” he says, “it’s a killer world.” Here, in Kaldi’s, different things are said; there is no romance, just reality. “What does the person who comes to our shop want,” Grant continues, “especially in the Ethiopian section of town, they do not care about the name of the coffee, of how sexy it is to drink coffee and hallucinate, they just want good coffee. And good coffee is hard to find in the parts of Joburg where we have our shops, who goes into the Ethiopian section let alone sets up a coffee shop, and so we did. Our biggest problem is not that people do not want to drink our coffee, they want a fine coffee, they won’t drink crap, but for the market in this area, which is poor, most people are illegal immigrants who have come from Ethiopia, the coffee is too expensive, but we have to work on ensuring that the coffee is here. Look,” he points to the doorway of a shop that is situated in a derelict building, “the words on the calendar are in Amharic, there are thirteen months in the year.” In a urine scented passageway I watch a woman light a brazier, she is conducting a coffee ceremony, it is a part of her life, her ritual, her identity.

“I enjoy a blend of coffee,” says Ian of Park Café in Parkwood, “I don’t particularly like the coffee of origin, I don’t need to taste a particular place, it’s a single taste, dull, rather than singular, I like to blend my beans. The only coffee of origin here is Jamaican Blue Mountain, and that is expensive. I have a small roaster,” he points to a pink coffee roaster that is in the corner of the restaurant, “I spend hours roasting, mixing, tasting, I search for the perfect blend. In order to find it each time I vary the percentage of beans in the mix, the length of the roast for each particular bean; this one that you are drinking is a blend of Guatemalan, Costa Rican, Kenyan and Malawian … and no I am not going to reveal the secret of the combination,” he laughs. “I am not into the trendy-ness of coffee drinking, I’m into its style,” he leans forward, his bag, which lies on the table, has the word Gucci, embossed on it. “Either I like the coffee or I don’t,” he continues. “I can taste if coffee is stale, it does not last for more than fourteen days, after that forget it, throw it out, also if you don’t know how to use the espresso machine then don’t make coffee, it’s shit. Sexy, yes coffee is associated with intellect and money; it’s not a cheap drink, sexy and affluence go hand in hand. Coffee may have originated in Africa but the culture of coffee drinking is a European concept, Italy is the forerunner of that culture. In South Africa the cultural context is European, people drink Italian coffee they don’t think about its Africanness or the African cultural context. It has also become associated with the fast pace of America, the ‘coffee to go’ thing. South Africans don’t want Africa they want Europe and America, sophistication and an immediate buzz.”

Coffee, even the word sounds sexy, it folds languidly around the rooftop of the mouth, it sounds like … like a perfume, the illusion of romance, the scent of a princess. What is this feeling in my nose, this taste at the back of my throat, a mixture of the blossoming red Arabica coffee bean, a hint of patchouli and musk, the flower of the bitter coffee bean mixed with vetiver, a product of years of work, years of love; rich top notes open with the deeply roasted coffee bean, soon to make way for the heart of the scent, a dark chocolate accord, then it segues into the mellow smell of cedar and liquid golden honey. A quixotic bouquet, sweet like a child’s caresses, the erotic movement of the bow over the strings of the violin, rich and corrupt – ‘A* Men Pure Coffee’ developed by perfumers Jacques Huclier and Christine Nagel for Thierry Mugler.

Coffee – a wild and exotic history, a legal drug, a romantic revolution, a fashion statement, an advertising success story ….. it can be sold in many ways … and I, I buy it.