Ethiopia - Lalibela - Traditional Coffee

Ethiopians maintain that coffee was first drunk here and recognized for his energy giving potency. Khalid the goat herder found it in Ethiopia goes the apocryphal tale. By 15th century coffee was drunk in Yemen’s Sufi Monasteries.  Coffee beans were first exported from Ethiopia to Yemen and Yemen was part of the extensive Axumite kingdom.
I do love the ritual and ceremony in the village.  With Endy, my guider the Yemrehanna Kristos Monastery by Bilbilla we stopped for coffee in the village after the climb to the cave church. I bought a silver Lalibella cross in the gift store there and did enjoy the unintrussive sales man.  The people overall in Lalibella have all been nice and non aggressive. I loved taking pictures on the drive up on the country side, where mud huts and grass roots.  Cattle, goats, sheep,  donkeys,  mules and chickens were everywhere to be seen.  Also little children waving.  Men with picks and shovels. Women with water buckets and bags on their necks and backs.
There was road construction with a relatively new dump truck and a plow being used. machinery being unusual in the rural land dominated by human power.
The fig trees and abyssinian bush was all over the land.