American Tea
Last month I promised a friend in my village named Amadou that I would make "American tea" for him. A couple weeks ago I finally made good on that promise. I brought my glass mug, tea strainer, loose leaf attaya tea, and teapot over to his house in a shopping bag saved from a trip to the market in Kedougou. I sat in his hut as he brought in his charcoal stove full of hot coals. The stoves generally used for attaya in my village are made of intricately woven baling wire. The wire construction leaves sufficient small holes in the bottom of the stove that ash can be shaken out every once in a while while not letting pieces of good charcoal fall through.
Amadou brought in a broken plastic laundry benoir to set the stove in and prevent ash from getting on the floor of his hut. He poured a little water in the bottom of the benoir to prevent it from melting. I filled up my water kettle, set it on the coals, and sat back to wait for the water to boil. As I was sitting in my chair alternately idly chatting with Amadou and sitting in silence looking around at the walls of his hut, I began to smell a familiar smell. The image of the smell came to me before I realized where it was coming from:
Four years ago, I sit at my desk during my first co-op at a plastics company in Massachusetts. It is afternoon, and the lull in the workday has come as usual. Slowly a smell creeps into my conscience--once I acknowledge the smell it is hard to avoid. It is dye-cleaning day, so the shop workers are taking apart our customers' multi-layer dyes to burn and scrape off the residual plastic left inside the equipment. The strong smell of burning plastic quickly permeates the thin walls and makes its way into the old lobby of the building where my cubicle sits. I take a quick walk to the other engineers' offices to get some fresher air, then I head back to my desk and hope the dye-cleaning job will be a quick one.
Sitting in Amadou's hut, this familiar odor of burning plastic registered in my brain. The stove had been placed too close to the edge of the benoir. He moved it to the center and the problem was solved. I am amazed how a simple smell in rural Senegal triggered such a specific memory from a factory in Massachusetts that I have not seen in years.
When the water eventually boiled (it takes exponentially longer to boil on charcoal rather than a gas flame, I learned), I poured it into the mug where I had placed my tea strainer full of the standard green tea used for attaya all over Senegal. I used only about a tenth of the tea packet--making attaya in Senegalese fashion consumes a whole packet--and got more than one mug's worth of tea. After taking a sip myself, I passed the mug to Amadou and encouraged him to drink the whole thing, as Americans do. Not surprisingly, the tea tasted like a weaker and sugarless version of the attaya I drink every day. Amadou was complimentary and called in a couple people from his family to take a sip of the American-style tea.
As I walked back to my compound, a neighbor greeted over the fence as I passed his backyard. He asked when I was going to come make American tea for him. News travels fast.
Guess that song #1 (lyrics translated in to Jaxanke):
Kana tu miro sinin kuwoto
Kana tu a be naani saayin
A be naani nin jannin ti
Kunun banta, kunun banta!
Amadou brought in a broken plastic laundry benoir to set the stove in and prevent ash from getting on the floor of his hut. He poured a little water in the bottom of the benoir to prevent it from melting. I filled up my water kettle, set it on the coals, and sat back to wait for the water to boil. As I was sitting in my chair alternately idly chatting with Amadou and sitting in silence looking around at the walls of his hut, I began to smell a familiar smell. The image of the smell came to me before I realized where it was coming from:
Four years ago, I sit at my desk during my first co-op at a plastics company in Massachusetts. It is afternoon, and the lull in the workday has come as usual. Slowly a smell creeps into my conscience--once I acknowledge the smell it is hard to avoid. It is dye-cleaning day, so the shop workers are taking apart our customers' multi-layer dyes to burn and scrape off the residual plastic left inside the equipment. The strong smell of burning plastic quickly permeates the thin walls and makes its way into the old lobby of the building where my cubicle sits. I take a quick walk to the other engineers' offices to get some fresher air, then I head back to my desk and hope the dye-cleaning job will be a quick one.
Sitting in Amadou's hut, this familiar odor of burning plastic registered in my brain. The stove had been placed too close to the edge of the benoir. He moved it to the center and the problem was solved. I am amazed how a simple smell in rural Senegal triggered such a specific memory from a factory in Massachusetts that I have not seen in years.
When the water eventually boiled (it takes exponentially longer to boil on charcoal rather than a gas flame, I learned), I poured it into the mug where I had placed my tea strainer full of the standard green tea used for attaya all over Senegal. I used only about a tenth of the tea packet--making attaya in Senegalese fashion consumes a whole packet--and got more than one mug's worth of tea. After taking a sip myself, I passed the mug to Amadou and encouraged him to drink the whole thing, as Americans do. Not surprisingly, the tea tasted like a weaker and sugarless version of the attaya I drink every day. Amadou was complimentary and called in a couple people from his family to take a sip of the American-style tea.
As I walked back to my compound, a neighbor greeted over the fence as I passed his backyard. He asked when I was going to come make American tea for him. News travels fast.
Guess that song #1 (lyrics translated in to Jaxanke):
Kana tu miro sinin kuwoto
Kana tu a be naani saayin
A be naani nin jannin ti
Kunun banta, kunun banta!
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