The Book of Isaiah prophesies that, in the “latter days”, God’s people will beat their swords into plowshares. In Saint Louis, Missouri, the fence surrounding the Busch family estate at Grant’s Farm is made of Civil War musket barrels. And in Ethiopia, The BBC reports, the burned shells from the two-year border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea are being fashioned into espresso machines.
Azmeraw Zeleke and six employees, in their three-room workshop about one hundred miles from the scene of the worst of the war’s fighting, buy the spent shells from people who collected and hid them during the conflict. Many Ethiopians had used the shells, which are about three feet in length, as giant pestles, or for containers in which they washed their clothes.
But Zeleke saw, in a country which grows some of the world’s most desirable coffees, another obvious use for the shells.
Trimming and sealing their pointed ends, puncturing holes in the cylinders, and attaching tubing to the openings, he has a machine which channels the coffee, water, and milk that constitute espresso.
Ethiopia, of all Africa’s coffee producers, is the only one which has its own coffee culture. Ethiopian-born women practice a daily “Coffee Ceremony”, gathering at one home to share what is happening in their lives. More than a mere getting together for coffee and cake; the ritual reinforces friendships, shows for respect for the elder women, and serves as a time of thanksgiving.
But Zeleke has said that, in spite of the Ethiopian appreciation of coffee, his machine’s ancestry as weapons of destruction can deter people from buying them.
He admits, however, that in the five or six years since he began production, the machines he has sold number in the hundreds. And the asking price is $1300 each.
Most of those have been sold in his own city of Mekele, which has been, since the war with Eritrea ended, trying to rebuild itself as a tourist attraction.
And if Ethiopia and Eritrea ever work out their remaining border issues, even the Eritreans may be drinking coffee made in their own shells.
