Ancient Trade Routes

Following Bereket deeper into the Mankera Forest on our journey to find coffee’s legendary Mother Tree, we thought we understood what “original coffee” meant. Hours of highland trekking through ancient forest, past wild coffee plants growing in their birthplace ecosystem, had filled us with anticipation for whatever revelation awaited at our destination.
But sometimes the most profound discoveries happen not at planned destinations, but in the unscripted moments between.
Rounding a bend in the forest path, we encountered a scene that stopped us completely: an elderly farmer and his young son, working together to load weathered burlap sacks onto the backs of two patient donkeys. The bags bore the unmistakable markings of the Kafa Forest Coffee Farmers’ Co-operative Union, but what struck us wasn’t the logistics—it was the intimacy of the moment. Three generations of coffee knowledge traveling the same forest paths their ancestors had walked for centuries.
“Garden coffee,” Bereket said quietly, recognizing something in the scene we couldn’t yet read. “This is how families here bring wild forest coffee to cooperative. Same way for maybe hundred years.”
The farmer looked up as we approached, his face carrying the weathered dignity of someone who had spent decades moving between forest and market. His son, maybe twelve years old, adjusted the load on one of the donkeys with practiced efficiency that spoke of knowledge passed down through daily participation rather than formal instruction.
As Bereket exchanged greetings in the local language, we found ourselves witnessing something that felt both timeless and increasingly precious—a direct connection between forest coffee and community cooperation that existed outside the industrial systems we’d encountered elsewhere.
But what happened next would challenge everything we thought we understood about coffee’s journey from forest to cup…