Wednesday, September 25, 2024

On the commute to civet la nation

  

"According to legend, the coffee plant was discovered in Ethiopia by a goat herder named Kaldi around 850 AD, who observed increased physical activity in his goats after they consumed coffee beans.

The coffee plant was first found in the mountains of Yemen. Then by 1500, it was exported to the rest of the world through the port of Mokha, Yemen. " 


"Kaldi was a legendary Ethiopian goatherd who is credited for discovering the coffee plant around 850 CE, according to popular legend, after which such crop entered the Islamic world and then the rest of the world." 

De Saluberrima potione Cahue seu Cafe nuncupata Discurscus (Rome, 1671).

The myth of Kaldi 

 the Ethiopian goatherd and his dancing goats, 

 the coffee origin story most frequently encountered in Western literature, 

 embellishes the credible tradition that the Sufi encounter with coffee 

 occurred in Ethiopia, which lies just across the narrow passage of the Red Sea from Arabia's western coast." 



___ 


Lost in a desert of dehydrated and emaciated skeletons, lizards sucking on pebbles to make saliva, stepping on cacti just to remain awake, the doctoral candidates trod the narrow funnel snaking up the hill, a ravine of sand littered with to go cups looking like skulls from philosophers, decaf in step, frothy at mouth, a pattern crowning hair made of sirocco styling, droopy horns and beep beep following the tail ahead, following the pellet smell of rabbit roadkill, on the only way to an oasis and environs, there's a thermal cafe,  a fog brewing above the chewed landscape, there's a pull off all hours jungle out of nowhere nor found on map, goats chewed that long before when the barista shepherd was singing to soothe the wolves howling from vienna balconies overlooking saucilito  


"Kopi luwak, also known as civet coffee, is a coffee that consists of partially digested coffee cherries, which have been eaten and defecated by the Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus).  

The cherries are fermented as they pass through a civet's intestines, and after being defecated with other fecal matter, they are collected. 

 Asian palm civets are increasingly caught in the wild and traded for this purpose" 

 




The traditional method of collecting feces from wild Asian palm civets has given way to an intensive farming method, in which the palm civets are kept in battery cages 

 and are force-fed the cherries.  

This method of production has raised ethical concerns about the treatment of civets  

and the conditions they are made to live in,  

which include isolation, poor diet, small cages, and a high mortality rate.


Although kopi luwak is a form of processing rather than a variety of coffee, it has been called one of the most expensive coffees in the world, with retail prices reaching US$100 per kilogram for farmed beans and US$1,300 per kilogram for wild-collected beans. 

 Another epithet given to it is that it is the "Holy Grail of coffees" 

"Its anal scent glands emit a nauseating secretion as a chemical defense when threatened or upset. " 


In Philippine mythology, the Bagobo people believe a being named Lakivot was said to be 

 a huge and powerful palm civet who can talk.  

Lakivot defeated various monsters, including the one-eyed monster Ogassi 

 and the busaw beings 

 who guarded the Tree of Gold, which had the Flower of Gold that he sought. 

 He was eventually transformed into a handsome young man, and married the person to whom he gave the Flower of Gold" 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_palm_civet

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_luwak 


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_bean

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