Kaldi and the Dancing Goats of Ethiopia

Long ago in the green highlands of Ethiopia, there was a young goatherd named Kaldi.

Every morning Kaldi took his goats up the hills, and every evening he brought them home, and every night the goats slept, the way goats do.

Until one evening they did not.

The goats came skipping down the hillside. They bounced. They butted heads. They leapt sideways for no reason at all. Long after dark, when they should have been curled up sleeping, they were still dancing about the pen.

Kaldi could not understand it. So the next day he followed them.

High up, he found the goats crowding round a bush he had never noticed before — a dark green bush covered in small red berries. They were eating them as fast as they could.

Kaldi tried one himself.

And, the story says, he felt so wonderfully awake that he began dancing too, right there on the hillside among his goats.

He carried some berries down to the monastery. The monks roasted the beans inside them, and poured hot water over them, and discovered they could stay awake through their long night prayers.

That bush was coffee. It still grows wild in Ethiopia's forests, and every cup anywhere in the world began there.

But that is a drink for grown-ups in the morning — not for you, and not now.

Goodnight, sleepy one. Let the goats do the dancing.