Benkum Art
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Still Red

Two coffee pickers near Yirgacheffe, an older Gedeo woman and a young girl, side-on in deep charcoal dresses and white netelas with narrow gold-and-green borders. The woman reaches up to a branch heavy with crimson cherries while the girl lifts a woven basket heaped with them, on a warm hand-woven cream field between stepped smoked-grey panels of enset leaves.

The tree still gives.

See it in your space

My basket is heavy before noon. Every branch I pull down still holds more red than my hands can take.

In October 2026, Ethiopia entered its 2026/27 coffee harvest. In the southern highlands, the country’s coffee belt, the rains came in close to normal, easing fears of a nationwide crisis, though weather during flowering cut yields by five to seven percent in parts of Yirgacheffe, Gedeb and Guji.

I tip the basket out and go back for the branch I couldn’t reach. It is still red.