Coffee Breaks

The Fuel of Creativity

I am such a huge coffee snob I don’t drink the stuff. Sixteen years ago I gave it up to reduce my stress and it took a lot for me to succumb.

I was in Ethiopia when the driver invited me to his house. His mother sat on the concrete floor creating this liquid gold. It was bitter, sweet, smooth and complicated, like life itself.

The second time I drank it after a sunrise expedition for photographs on Lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile. I ended up in hospital vomiting into a waste paper bin in front of a crowded room. I now only drink it with Ethiopians or in Ethiopia and by the thimble. The last I had was with the Ethiopian Ambassador to the UK in London, four years ago.

This portrait was made one warm January morning in the lakeside city of Bahir Dar. The smell of coffee beans sizzling on the pan, incense and even a waft of diesel fumes from passing trucks made me feel alive. The coffee ceremony, much loved by outsiders, is not merely an act for tourists.

This coffee shop was set up a back alley in a city where foreigners were thin on the ground, there are even fewer today as conflict has chased them away. But life goes on and the people need their coffee.