Thousands of people protest in Kaffa, Ethiopia, while the origin of coffee is politicized. Roast Magazine's Daily Coffee News

Thousands of people from Kaffa, Ethiopia, rallied in Bonga to protest following a controversial tourist sign at Jimma Airport. All photos by Emily McIntyre.

Kaffa, Ethiopia: Locals wear their identity until death, a bloodthirsty pride – this has never been as clear as the days of November 7-11, 2018, when they organized peaceful demonstrations in Bonga, the administrative center of the Kaffa area.

The people of Keffa, who had never protested before, had blocked roads 50 kilometers around Bonga and had no intention of giving up before their demands were met or that federal soldiers were brought , whichever comes first. Some travelers, foreigners and Ethiopians, were stranded in boarding houses and local hotels, while others stayed at Wush Wush and in coffee-washing stations off the beaten track, without food. .

A view of Bonga from a nearby hotel. The roads were blocked, leaving many travelers confined.

Each road was blocked: blocked by lines of sparkling stones as red as the road; blocked with pale tree branches; but mostly, stuck with people – thousands of them. They walked slowly. Land Rovers, Toyotas and Nissans moved among them, the drivers finally stopped to allow the swirling crowd to become denser, lining not only the streets, but also the buildings nearby, the piles of garbage and materials from the road, as well as the top of the streets. doors and walls. In almost every hand there was a branch of coffee. Green leaves glistening beans that had airbrush, green in red, red in pink.

"The coffee comes from Kaffa!" They screamed again and again, shaking their coffee boughs. Fresh-faced teenagers were making their way through the crowd in trucks with loudspeakers, while organizers and crowds echoed the call and the response. "The coffee comes from Bonga! They must answer us! We demand answers! The women greeted each other with a smile and banging their shoulders. Children ran underfoot with brightly colored shirts and muddy feet. It was a block party at the district level, a rally and a stubborn demand for answers at once.

Why did the Keffa people plan demonstrations that brought dozens, if not hundreds, of thousands of woredas close to shouting "Coffee comes from Kaffa!"?

In a historical context, Kaffa and Jimma (sometimes spelled Djimma) have struggled for a long time to determine which region is precisely at the origin of the coffee. For foreigners, this seems to be a moot point – Kaldi and his goats are apocryphal, lost in the mists of the beautiful multilayered mountains of western Ethiopia – but for people who belong to a tribe or a village is a question of central identity, the distinction counts.

The Jimma Regional Airport has huge banners saying "Welcome to Djimma, the motherland of Arabica coffee!", On the pretext that Jimma was once the capital of Kaffa province before its dissolution. The Bonga National Coffee Museum, funded by the government, is also a dormant institution. It can only be opened if an official specifies the exact origin of the coffee. Meanwhile, coffee is the cornerstone of the local population and a major source of income for all the inhabitants of the region.

The Jimma / Djimma airport

According to an article by Reporter Ethiopia written by Brook Abu and published on November 10, Ethiopian Airlines wrote:

"Join us on December 4 and 5, 2018, as coffee lovers around the world are at the origin, where humankind has been enjoying a cup of coffee for centuries! Coffee growers, roasters, exporters, researchers and writers will gather at the United Nations Conference Center, followed by a coffee safari in Kaffa, the region that brought you this magical grain! "

Shortly after, "Kaffa" was published for "Jimma". That's exactly what people feared. Social media speeding up the transmission of news, 200 local organizers gathered a considerable number of people for a peaceful demonstration in Kaffa.

An organizer of the protest (hereinafter referred to as E for reasons of anonymity), father of two children in his mid-thirties, said that he and his team had worked very hard to keep people peaceful. "We try to protect everyone," said E, adding with conviction that "Coffee is for Kaffa. It's beyond an economic issue. "

A boy during protests in Bonga.

This implicitly implied that if the protest became violent – if one of the youths lost his temper and threw a rock on someone, or took a stick and hit a vehicle – the federal soldiers who were waiting at Wush Wush were lowering.

Beyond the purest intentions of the young protesters, some clandestine elements are at stake. The new Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, has cost a lot of money to corrupt men. If it does not reinforce the restrictions on the use of financing by coffee exporters, it is very common for exporters to sell cans of coffee at a loss for foreign exchange and to have more weight than banks to finance them. he is importing more profitable goods, such as trucks – then picking up public housing from the men who illegally occupied them, then renting them, and handing over the keys to the really disabled and extremely poor people for whom they were built.

It makes it more difficult to conduct business without paying the appropriate taxes. In other words, it makes things harder for many men who have pulled their fortune from the misery of others – and these men refuse to fall without a fight.

A charcoal brazier for the roasting of Ethiopian coffee.

The rest of the world has been informed of the upsurge of violence in Ethiopia since the election of Mr. Abiy. What you may not realize is that many of these conflicts were caused by the former guard who was exerting his influence to destabilize the country and spreading rumors to convince the local population that, for example, the Dr. Abiy being Jimma, these recent posts on social media. are proof that Oromia is favored by the new government. If they can cause enough problems, deaths and destruction, Mr. Abiy's government could fail. They can recover their power. It is young people and local people who are at risk of losing.

Starting in peace, the demonstrations slowly intensified, the government did not react and rumors of the arrival of soldiers. On the third day, the Coffee & Tea Authority apologized for any misunderstanding, but did not ratify Kaffa as the coffee's birthplace. The organizers of the protest began to remove sticks from the teenager's hands and to shout at the people to claim peace through the loudspeakers. The stores were closed for days. The hotels were running out of food. Protest was one thing, but blocking the roads was a different and more important offense.

Finally, on the morning of Sunday 11 November, the local police – who had been smiling to support demonstrations – began to clear the roads, manually moving the stones and branches of the red earth under the broad folds of the blue-green hills. from Kaffa. The atmosphere has become ugly. Young people through the stones and threats shouted. The police called the federal soldiers who entered Bonga around 18 hours. The crowd melted without a shot. Kaffa's first demonstration did not kill anyone.

Some people have been arrested by zone officials, who should not have allowed road blocking. Five days after the start of the demonstration, the demonstration was over, but its implications are vast and immediate. A few days later, Kaffa's board of directors voted in favor of the candidacy of a separate state, following Sidama's recent recognition as a separate state.

Since the Coffee and Tea Authority has apologized for the misunderstanding but has not announced that Kaffa would be the cradle of coffee, the controversy continues. Be that as it may, whether it be Kaffa or Jimma, Ethiopia will remain the mystical homeland of coffee, wrapped in incense mists and rich as a cup of sini filled with traditional buna.