It is a long and winding road to trace the roots of the coffee phenomenon. Today we sit and chat in bustling city cafes, we use percolators, drips, plungers, and mokkas.

Cappuccino and Latte are household words. We have gleaming espresso machines on our countertops and special coffee cups for the car.

Most kitchen cupboards have a jar of instant coffee or decaf lurking in the back. We have specialty coffee, we have flavoured coffee…and we have coffee flavoured things. We even have coffee table books about coffee.

Coffee stimulates conversation and breaks down barriers between people. It has a place in the boardroom, the staff room, the living room, and in the kitchen.

Coffee transcends both class and culture

People speak of coffee the way they speak of wines – we talk of body and character, of lingering aftertaste, of floral notes and fruity notes, subtlety, robustness, complexity and balance.

But among this burgeoning coffee culture there is a wide misconception about the origins of coffee. True, it has become a worldwide phenomenon - it grows in the lush soil of South America, on the slopes of Guatemala, the peaks of Jamaica and on the edges of volcanoes in Hawaii. True that Brazil is the largest coffee producing country in the world. But how many coffee drinkers actually know where coffee really comes from, where coffee was born?

The Arabica bean has its roots in Ethiopia and the Robusta bean (so named for its larger size and strength) comes from Uganda in East Africa, where it still grows wild today. Coffee is now widely cultivated across this small country, but many hundreds of years ago, before coffee was known as a beverage, Ugandan warriors would chew coffee beans before going into battle, which would stimulate them, making them feel strong and invincible. Today, even though it has reached commercial levels, coffee in Uganda still has ritual significance.

Come and see for yourself. Come with us on a journey and follow coffee back to its source. Join us on a safari to the land of coffee’s origin.