This month marks our 5th year celebrating “International Coffee Day” (Sept 29th) - which is an unofficial global holiday to celebrate coffee, the third most popular beverage in the world (water is #1 and tea is #2 - in case you were curious) and everything it means to humanity: a livelihood, a favorite way to start the day, a way to connect with others, a ritual to relax, a hobby, and for a few lucky of us, Ethos lovers - a way to make an impact!
We’ve written extensively about the future we want to see… so this time, we thought we would do something different and go back in time, and tell the story - more accurately the legend - of how it all began…
About 1,400 years ago, in an Ethiopian highland named Kaffa, a goat herder named Kaldi noticed something strange in his goats one fateful evening. His usually calm goats were jumping around and bleating loudly, and refused to go to sleep. This was highly unusual, so Kaldi decided to investigate - he took them back to the same field the next day, but this time stayed close to carefully watch them. He saw them flocking to a group of shrubs with round red fruits… and enthusiastically begin to eat them. He decided to try these fruits himself, and was delighted as he began to also feel its energizing effects. Excited about his discovery, he filled his pockets with as many fruits as he could carry, and took them home to his wife. She tried them and thought the berries were “a gift from God”, and told him he should show them to the monks in the Abyssinian monastery nearby. Unfortunately, the monks disagreed with her, and labeled these fruits as “the devil’s work”, tossing them into the fire. Yet, the delicious aroma that filled the room from the roasting berries (and its seeds!) captured their attention. They removed the remainders from the fire, placed them in a vessel, and added water to extinguish the dying embers. This freshly brewed coffee had an even more intoxicating aroma, and attracted even more monks. Some of them tried it, and once they also experienced its energizing effects, they thought they had finally found something that would keep them awake during their prayers - beginning the first daily coffee drinking ritual in history!
Fourteen centuries later, we continue this great tradition… and now strive to brew more than a delicious cup, to brew the change we want to see in the world!
Thank you for being part of our story,
Jolian & Lisbeth
