Coffee Ceremony VS. Tea Ceremony

Many people in the United States have heard of the Japanese Tea Ceremony. It serves as a powerful motif for what we understand as Japanese; intense focus on process, delicate attention paid to inputs and prescribed methods of ingestion. Unfortunately I was unable to attend a tea ceremony while I was living in Japan. Nobody I knew was qualified to administer the ceremony and the local tourist hotels were charging outrageous amounts. The ceremony acted as another motif, perfection unconnected and unattainable to the people of Japan.
In a way this ceremony is a connection that both America and Japan share. Ceremonies and rituals are reserved for rare once in a lifetime events and are not used to focus or give significance to everyday events.
One of the things I am enjoying in Ethiopia is the daily use of the coffee ceremony. As many of you know, coffee originates in Ethiopia. Its powerful ability to extract productivity from workers as well as its increasingly delicious taste has spread it across the world. Around the corner from our very very budget hotel in Addis Ababa, there is a little hole in the wall performing daily coffee ceremonies for those wishing to spend 28 cents for a cup. The ritual is this: Take green beans and roast them in a pan above a wood burning flame. As they start to pop like popcorn, bring the pan to participants and allow them to waft the aroma towards their nose. Then take the beans and crush them with a pestle and mortar. Pour the crushed beans in a pot and add some spices and boiled water. Serve the coffee and bring by a live plant called “health of Adam”. The coffee drinker then pinches a bit off the plan and adds the leaf to his cup. All the while this ritual is taking place incense is burning over an other little wood burning stove. The coffee ritual takes place in specific little areas with cups arranged a certain way and a particular curved wooden stool. These ceremony places can be seen almost everywhere, in the international airport right outside the baggage claim, in hotel lobbies, in traditional restaurants, in hole in the wall cafes and in peoples homes. I am waiting to see it traveling on a bus or on a donkey.
To abstract this a bit, I am very excited to see how Ethiopian tradition is woven into the fabric of modern life. Unlike the tourist poster I often saw in Japan where the Geisha is talking on a cell phone, which never happens because the Geisha are tucked away much like the tea ceremony, the blending of tradition and modern is a part of life here in Ethiopia. Women wear traditional white cotton robes each Sunday to church, traditional dances are performed on modern music videos on the Ethiopian MTV, and traditional Ethiopian food served at most restaurants. It is nice to visit a country, particularly in a continent that is still struggling from the identity crisis imposed by colonialism, that is very much itself. The past and the present are more visually and practically connected.