UGANDA LEADS AFRICAN COUNTIRIES IN COFFEE PRODUCATION"
Coffee, before it became a drink, before it became a cash
crop, before Europeans exported it by the ton, existed as something far older,
quieter, and more intimate in the cultural memory of the Baganda.
It was never brewed.
It had no aroma rising from a clay pot.
It was never sipped at dawn beside a cooking fire.
Coffee did not belong to the mouth. It belonged to the hand,
the oath, the threshold between conflict and reconciliation. It lived not in
cups but in palms; not in markets but in moments of consequence. The bean was
not consumed for pleasure. It was invoked for meaning.
To understand this earlier life of coffee is to enter a
world where objects carried moral weight, where truth was not written down but
enacted, and where memory was preserved not in archives but in social
consequence. Coffee, in this world, functioned as a moral instrument—one that
mediated disputes, sealed agreements, healed fractures, and bore witness to
truth. It was not neutral. It judged.
In its earliest life, coffee existed as a wild shrub,
growing at the edges of forests, along footpaths, near wetlands and
transitional spaces where human settlement gave way to spirit territory. These
spaces were liminal zones—places where the visible and invisible were believed
to intersect. Coffee thrived there because its role was itself liminal: it
stood between accusation and forgiveness, between illness and healing, between
war and peace.
The Baganda did not farm coffee in this period. They
recognized it. They encountered it. They gathered it deliberately, sparingly,
with attention to context and timing. Selection mattered. A cracked bean was
discarded. A bruised one was avoided. A seed that had fallen prematurely was
considered unreliable. Coffee used for ritual had to be intact—physically whole
to symbolize moral wholeness.
Disputes were inevitable. Boundary disagreements,
accusations of theft, marital conflict, inheritance questions, broken
promises—all surfaced within community life. What distinguished Baganda dispute
resolution was not the absence of conflict but the method by which truth was
pursued.
When a serious dispute arose, elders convened. These
gatherings were public and slow. Each party spoke. Witnesses recalled memory
rather than documents. Silence mattered. And at the center lay coffee.
The bean was placed between disputing parties. To lie in the
presence of coffee was to invite misfortune. To swear falsely while holding it
was to curse oneself and one’s lineage. In this way, coffee functioned as an
archive—recording promises not in writing, but in memory and consequence.
Elders observed not only words but demeanor. Hesitation,
trembling hands, abrupt speech—these mattered. Truth was embodied. The coffee
did not force confession. It invited accountability.
Punishment, when it came, was restorative rather than
retributive. Compensation restored harmony. Coffee accompanied reconciliation,
chewed slowly to symbolize endurance. Peace, like bitterness, required
patience.
Coffee accompanied moments of life and death. At funerals,
it reminded the living that death was transition. In inheritance, it anchored
memory. In accusations of witchcraft, it restrained reckless speech.
For young men, coffee marked passage into adulthood. Chewing
bitterness without complaint signaled readiness for responsibility. Masculinity
was discipline, not dominance.
Coffee could not be hoarded. Its power depended on
circulation. It belonged to relationships, not individuals. This moral economy
directly contradicted later plantation logic.
Colonialism ruptured this world. The British encountered
coffee as underutilized land potential. Ritual meant inefficiency. Memory meant
disorder. To cultivate coffee was to enclose it. To enclose it was to strip it
of moral authority and convert it into property.
Coffee ceased to witness truth. It began to measure
productivity. Quotas replaced oaths. Taxes replaced testimony. The whip
replaced belief.
Yet memory endured. Elders remembered when coffee judged men
without violence. They remembered when truth had weight without coercion.
This chapter recovers that lost archive. Not as nostalgia,
but as history.
Before coffee was cultivated, it was trusted.
Before it was sold, it was sworn upon.
Before it was weighed, it was remembered. The wild shrub remembers.
Thank you so reaching the end.
I am Jeremy Jjemba! Chao!
