Filter coffee

The first morning I woke up in South Africa, I was at Ginn's house. When I joined her for breakfast, she was busy making "filter coffee." A rudimentary version of this is pictured above. Basically you have a special thing (here I'm using a funnel) that holds your coffee filter and grounds, and you slowly pour hot water until you've dripped yourself a cup. This seemed sort of silly, but since every place I have lived has its own particular way about coffee, I just assumed this was South Africa's way, so I would go with it. Probably they don't even have coffee makers here. At the grocery store, I bought some filters and some coffee, and then in the kitchen here I dug around until I found a funnel that could serve as the thing to hold the filter.

So the first morning here, I followed Ginn's instructions and made a cup of coffee. It took twenty minutes to drip an entire cup, and by the time the cup was full, it was tepid at best. But that was fine, because this is South Africa! I will drink South African coffee and I will be happy about it. The second morning, I tried to hurry things along, but coffee will only drip so fast through a filter in a funnel. But I drank my cup of coffee and I loved it. South African coffee - splendid!

I was halfway through my cup that second morning when Gogo burst out on the patio with a surprise for me. She had dug around in the storage room, and here she was walking toward me with a coffee maker! She got such a belly laugh out of this. She said she thought it was so funny watching me make filter coffee, and she knew just the thing that would make me happy. She was beaming. I am in love with her. Tomorrow we will have a whole pot of hot coffee together.