Tea Man, Tea Country

They sure do love their tea here. I had thought it would be coffee, coffee, coffee but no, tea rules! That is good for me - a tea drinker. They like lots of sugar in their tea and that is just fine with me too although I think I need to take it easy on the whole sugar thing - my intake is way tooo high!

I see people walking everywhere carrying tea trays - mostly men. In the Khan - the big market there are men delivering tea to the stall workers, on construction sites men will sit on the side of the road and take some tea, in the bank there is a man in black pants and white shirt bringing a tea tray from desk to desk and even in our school I noticed a man carrying a tea tray down the hall one day. Must be a sure sign that our little school has actually arrived!

Here he is in the hallway outside my room. Apparently the administrative staff and visitors are treated to tea delivery. I just mooch off of Mrs. Farida who has a nice tea station all set up in her room next door. I think it was the in the first bag of supplies she brought to school.

Most recently I had a tea adventure in the desert of the Sinai. There is a big desert valley that runs north to south through central Sinai called Wadi Ghazela for the gazel that used to roam there. At the entrance is an older man who makes tea for tourists who stop by. This man sat by a small wood fire. The door to his one room home was carved out of a cliff wall and the trunk of a palm tree with a thick rug tossed onto it made a bench to sit on or lean against. It was all quaint and rustic, summoning visions of humans at the beginning of history. That is until his cell phone rang!

Here is a sweet momma cat and kitten who watched us at the edge of this camp.

We drank a lot of tea that day. After hiking through a small canyon and doing some serious four-wheeling (YES! cars can go over rocks and up sand dunes like they do in the commercials on TV!) we stopped at a Bedouin oasis and had lunch and . . . of course, tea.

At the entrance to the valley (wadi) behind us. Desert, canyons, oasis and amazing views everywhere. The colors and shadows changed the landscape as the day went on.

5 different families live in this oasis. The women greeted us with their wares for sale and a man cooked us lunch. We sat in a palm frond and fabric tent to get out of the heat. The palm trees were a lush restful vision of green after all that desert.

Potatoes and carrots cooked in a thin tomato sauce, oranges, tomato and cucumber salsa/salad, rice, and bread. The basics but when you are hungry - yum!

And tea which is a sage flavor with lots and lots of sugar. Served in shot glass size portions.

At the end of the day we visited an elderly woman in another Bedouin camp. This one had a few younger mom type women and lots of children all scrapping around. I purchased some dried sage tea from her and am now the proud owner of a baggie full of a very suspicious-looking substance!! We'll see if I can get it to the States somehow . . . Regardless, taking tea will always conjur these exotic images for me.