By the time green coffee was successfully cultivated in Kenya, it had been used as a crop in neighboring Ethiopia for more than 1,000 years. But when coffee finally arrived in Kenya, just 500 miles south of the birthplace of coffee, 100 seeds had traveled 2,000 miles from Reunion Island. It seems likely that coffee grew wild within the region that would become Kenya, buried deep inside impenetrable forests, or perhaps hiding in plain site; but it wasn’t until 1895 that missionaries first attempted to grow coffee for commercial purposes.
