For the Manggarai People of Flores, Coffee is More Than Just a Crop or a Drink.

The coffee was Arabica.

                                                                       

It was served in a petite, colorful glass, its jet-black residue banked up at the bottom. The gritty texture gently massaged my tongue, tickling the excitable tissues of my soft palate. As I waited for its lean acidity to unravel itself fully from the intoxicating sweetness of the sugar that had captured my taste buds, I raised the glass close to my nostrils and inhaled greedily. The rising vapor settled within me, its warmth filling my nasal cavities, its gorgeous aroma sending my olfactory nerves firing on all cylinders. My eyes, shorn of conscious control, rolled upward, as if my irises had arranged a tryst with my drooping eyelids.

During that timeless yet transient moment, Manggarai coffee entered my soul. The spell of ecstasy

was broken by the honest, impish laughter of children, directed right at me. The adults couldn’t help themselves either – the otherworldly potency of this flavorful blend must have spoiled me such that I looked downright ridiculous to them. So I endeavored to straighten my face, trying to appear more sensible – with meager success – as I carried on sipping this divine drink, lingering as long as possible, until nothing remained but sludge.

“Some more?” An elderly woman with a shiny smile emerged from inside the house, a sooty tin kettle in hand. After a questioning glance at my partner – with the steaming mug clasped between her palms, she was lost in her own bubble of pleasure – I nodded.

Manggarai coffee farmers

It was only our second serving, but the people we’d met just minutes before had suddenly become affectionate friends. It was a cool, cloudy late afternoon in Melo, a pristine village surrounded by lush valleys and the stately vertebrae of volcanoes, in the region of Manggarai, Flores. Dark, menacing clouds were convening in great numbers above us, yet rain was hesitant to come down.

All the better. The villagers, done with their morning work in the fields, were able to flock to this simple house built of neat narrow planks, to chat about life over the ubiquitous cups of freshly brewed, sweetened Manggarai coffee. Indeed, life for these people revolves around Coffea arabica and the mighty beverage humanity has brewed from it: Next to me sat a young mother with a toddler, who could barely say hello but was already practiced in the art of imbibing coffee from his plastic demitasse.