W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

I think we all pray to the first cup of the day. It’s a silent prayer, sung while the mind is still foggy and blue. “O Magic Cup,” it might go, “carry me above the traffic jam. Keep me civil in the subway. And forgive my employer, as you forgive me. Amen”
~Stewert Lee Allen

Africa is know by connoisseurs as some of the finest coffee-producing regions in the world. Coffee beans were first recorded growing wild in Ethiopia around 800AD. It was ritually drank in coffee ceremonies and eaten in a form of coffee power bar, mixing beans with animal fats and other natural ingredients. Years later, once discovered by traders, Ethiopian coffee beans travelled to Arabia where they were first roasted and sold in coffee houses.

Coffee is a brewed beverage with a bitter, acidic flavour prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, South-East Asia, South Asia and Africa. Green (un-roasted) coffee is one of the most traded agricultural commodities in the world. Coffee can have a stimulating effect on humans due to its caffeine content. It is one of the most-consumed beverages in the world. The average coffee drinker consumes 4.6kg (10.1lb) of roasted coffee per year (world’s highest per capita is Finland at 11.4kg per year). The average consumption in South Africa is 0.6kg (2006); but growing at about ten percent per year. Amen to that!