My second morning in Ethiopia, I woke not remembering where I was. As my eyes began to focus themselves, I saw intricately woven bamboo above and to all sides of me. Through a window, I could see the sun had just come up. The jungle was alive with monkeys running and jumping from tree to tree, rustling the leaves and shaking the braches where vultures sat waiting.

Africa! Oh, yes, I was in Ethiopia! The bamboo that surrounded me was a “typical Sidamo” style house at the Aragesh Lodge. There were about eight of these structures on the lodge’s grounds surrounded by nature preserves. I rolled out of bed and made my way to the dining house for breakfast. There was a lot of work to be done, and we’d better get a move on.

The Coffee Quality Institute had sent Kelly Peltier of Canopy Coffee and me to Ethiopia to train some cooperatives in basic cupping protocol and coffee laboratory operations. After spending a week in the field, we would head back to Addis Ababa to facilitate examinations for the Star Cupper program with a select group of senior cuppers. We were on our way to two coffee growing regions in the south. These would be none other that the famous coffee-producing areas of Sidamo and Yirgacheffe. That morning, I had the same light and giddy feeling you get when you’re about to meet up with your lifelong crush. After all these years of dreaming about the African countryside, I was finally going to see the birthplace of coffee. I’d seen that Meryl Streep movie a hundred times, and I’d been mumbling her lines under my breath for weeks: “I had a faaaahrm in Africa...”

After breakfast, we piled in the truck with the guide and agronomist, Tesfaye, and traveled another hour south until we reached the town of Aleta Wondo in Sidama. This small town is home to the Wottona Bulituma Cooperative. The lab station was almost bare when we arrived. They had a few tables, two dozen cupping cups, a sample roaster, and not much else to work with. Kelly pulled out a spanking new kettle and we set the water to boil even before we had fully assessed the situation. Uyassu, the main lab tech, was parked next to a single electric sample-roasting machine, busily checking his wristwatch for clues to his roast. He was doing a remarkable job with almost nothing to guide him; this roaster had no temperature gauge.

Tesfaye was there to translate as I showed him how to try the roast with a long spoon and look for signs in the coffee’s development. We made a baked roast and a burnt roast as well, and decided to taste them along with the defects we graded out for the next day. We set to work cupping and scoring table after table, roasting samples and grading green coffee for defects. Our last night in town, we were invited to tour the site of a new school, orphanage and coffee training center just outside Aleta Wondo. As we drove past the crowded and muddy streets of the town, the jungle opened up again to lush greenery interspersed with banana and mango trees. Green Zebra tomatoes grew wild by the roadside, just like blackberries do in Seattle. People ducked out of their mud and bamboo homes to see us pass, and children pointed and yelled, “Ferengie! Ferengie!” (from “Frenchie,” since the first white people in Ethiopia were French).

We met the community’s leaders in a huge field where cows were grazing and coffee grew on a few surrounding elevations. They pointed out where the buildings would eventually stand as the crowd gradually grew larger...more farmers, more mothers, more children, babies, and teenagers began to follow our every move. Our parade grew to include what felt like the whole town and we just continued walking. Kelly and I were guided gently by this enormous crowd to the road again and up a small path to a farm house next a large clearing. We sat on a bench under a tree next to four of the town’s most revered and honored elders. They sat almost motionless watching us as we were welcomed and introduced to the entire crowd. The mayor of the town addressed the congregation and introduced us as coffee buyers from America.

We heard first from farmers who asked us how they could realize a better price for their endless and arduous work. I replied that the prospect of a coffee training center, where children would learn about coffee from age 11, was the beginning of something truly revolutionary. Children could learn at this early age all of the things we had just begun with Uyassu and his staff at the coop’s laboratory. Within a decade, we could have an entire community of people who understand the language and needs of the specialty coffee buyer. The better they understood what the quality market would bear and what people like me could pay, the higher the prices will go. I had goose bumps.