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A thread about coffee, learning and unlearning.
The lovely @HyabYohannes & @UofGUnescoRILA team sent me a packet, wrapped in red cloth, containing Eritrean coffee beans and incense and ground ginger.
I opened it with gratitude& was filled with new smells and new questions:
The lovely @HyabYohannes & @UofGUnescoRILA team sent me a packet, wrapped in red cloth, containing Eritrean coffee beans and incense and ground ginger.
I opened it with gratitude& was filled with new smells and new questions:
The coffee beans were pale GREEN. Why? What was this? I thought coffee beans were brown. The word for brown in Arabic - bunni - is closely related to the word for coffee bean - bunn - and surely this proves me right?
Well, no. Turns out you have to roast them to make them brown. My Italian coffee pride slightly shaken already, I thought - fine, ok, I'll roast them in a pan, how hard can it be?
Answer: very. My kitchen instantly filled with smoke and behold: burned beans:
Answer: very. My kitchen instantly filled with smoke and behold: burned beans:
Saving the saveable, I then ground them in my Nonno's coffee grinder. He resisted Fascism in Milan for years, but never told me about Italy's 'involvement' in Eritrea & Ethiopia. Why not? Why was I only finding out now, in Scotland? My Italian everything pride was crumbling fast.
By now I really needed a coffee. But wait, the ground ginger. What do you do with it? Put it in with the coffee? And can you even make Eritrean coffee in an Italian Moka? And why did I only just realise that Moka is a place in Yemen where coffee grows, not an Italian tradition?
Here's me - a multilingual almost-PhD mother-of-three - shaken and humbled as I sense the vastness of thing I need to unlearn.
The coffee bubbles up. It is zingy, strange, delicious.
I drink it in a fittingly world-turned-upside-down cup.
Here's to learning.
The coffee bubbles up. It is zingy, strange, delicious.
I drink it in a fittingly world-turned-upside-down cup.
Here's to learning.
