Harar

I was in Ethiopia.

I was in Harar.

the city of Hara.

And Hara, the city, is very similar to the cities in Morocco.

What, what changes there? And there are some absolutely remarkable stories out there.

In, in Planet Earth II, we talked about hyenas, uh, coming into a city, Harar in Ethiopia, um, at night and wandering the streets.

And I, [chuckles] I remember when I was there, I'd heard these stories about these hyenas coming into town, but I had to see it to really believe it.

So I went there on a recce trip beforehand, and the first night I was there, I had my Ethiopian guide, but he felt really ill.

And they came together.

I said, when did this start? I had to phone one of my my pastor in Harar.

I nearly mentioned that.

I had to Talk to them and say, you are related to these people.

And like, if you look at regions around Ethiopia, so when you were saying you could tell, you know, where the coffee has come from, can you describe like the differences in some of the key regions where the coffee is coming from and what those different flavors are or how are the beans different?

Yeah, well, I'm actually from the Harar region.

I'm Harari.

So Harar, okay, I'm biased, of course, but has the best coffee.

But it's one of the first places coffee was actually traded with the Yemeni traders.

It's the eastern part of Ethiopia.

So the Harar coffee has more of the mocha flavor, the mocha undertone, and it's a full-bodied coffee.

And it's like, when you find it, it's amazing.

And of course, we don't always have to look to history to understand these relationships.

I mean, history is certainly a treasure trove of understanding, but you've got, you know, the Hyenas in Harar are an example of a contemporary city living alongside and figuring out ways to live with Hyenas.

I think this is one of the reasons why animal studies in India is really remarkable because scholars are stepping forward and doing incredible multi-species ethnographies.

I think so

And then I brew it and I could like taste the blueberry notes.

It was an Ethiopian Harar, which we don't carry currently.

We carry a Sadamo, which has very similar notes, but man, this Ethiopian Harar, it was just like amazing.

And so I really got into like, you know, here I am, I'm like tasting this stuff and writing the descriptions for the coffee.

So anyway, as time went on and I came to work at Java Planet full time, I became the coffee tester because like, I don't know, I have the nose for it, right? So yeah, my job is to taste