Film Review: Black Gold: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

2006 NR 78 minutes

Directors: Nick Francis, Marc Francis

Ethiopia is the home of coffee. In fact, a legend is that a goatherd saw some goats that were so excited they seemed to be dancing. They had been eating the cherries from the coffee bush. The goatherd picked the cherries and took them home to his wife, who told the goatherd to take them to the monks. The monks, thinking that there was something evil about them, tossed the coffee cherries into the fire. When the aroma filled the monastery, the monks crushed the roasted beans and brewed the drink we now know as coffee.

Coffee holds an important place in the culture of Ethiopia, where a coffee ceremony is a central part of Ethiopian hospitality. Now over twelve million Ethiopians are involved in the production and distribution of coffee. Coffee accounts for over two thirds of the country’s earnings.

http://www.epicurean.com/articles/ethiopian-coffee-ceremony.html

“Black Gold” recounts the efforts of Tadesse Meskela of he Oromia Coffee Growers’ Cooperative to find an equitable price for the fair trade coffee produced by small farmers in Ethiopia. The farmers are making less and less money for a product that is increasingly expensive. The film shows the verdant fields of coffee and the increasingly destitute lives of the coffee growers, many of whom, in fact, have given up growing coffee and, instead grow the amphetamine-like stimulant, khat, from which they can earn more money.

This film made me determined to buy fair trade coffee. Coffee growers work so hard and earn so little. Most people, however, don’t have any idea of where their coffee comes from and the conditions of those who produce it.

This film urges us to “Wake up and smell the coffee.”

Coffee is so important in Ethiopia, that there is an Amharic expression<”Buna dabo naw,” which means “ Coffee is our bread.”