July 2019

On Travel and Tea

 “Clarity in my cup. Transparency of my soul. Lucidity of myself. Elixir of the ages. Tea makes us all sages.” ―Dharlene Marie Fahl

If you’ve ever seen tea poured in Senegal or India or Turkey or China, you’d swear it is liquid magic. Kettles raised high above their head, long spouts leaning over shoulders. Tossed tea landing perfectly in cups. It is a performance, an art form unto itself. Pouring with flare is the last step in a long ritual of slowing down, breathing, suspending, connecting. Through the ceremony of tea, I continue to find my cultural kin.

Long before I traveled the world, I saw America from the back seat of a 1982 blue Oldsmobile with no AC. Next to my big brother, we listened to stories on the radio, fought over who sat where, and melted in the summer heat. My dad at the wheel and my mom holding the road maps, we crisscrossed the country east to west and north to south. Summertime and holidays meant roadtrips. Roadtrips meant freedom, escape and discovery. Post Greenbook* and decades before #travelingwhileblack, all I knew was, we were a family that traveled, often hosted by extended family or friends. This was my first exposure to hospitality on the road. “Welcome, come in. Drink this. Rest a while.”

After each vacation, my father would gather family and friends around the slide projector. With popcorn, we would relive the drama of the Grand Canyon or how my nose bled climbing a mountain in North Dakota. I inherited my dad’s love of photography and the need to share my experiences upon return. For years I did it informally, gathering friends to look at images and try the foods I’d eaten while traveling.

Tea Afar started online as the keeper of my experiences travelling around the world. My 20th century version of my father’s slide projector, where I invited friends and family to join me on the road so to speak. More of a personal notebook, it kept me connected to my community at home and helped me cope as all my horizons were being stretched. As I traveled more, my community expanded across the globe. Eventually I felt Tea Afar should come to life offline and share these experiences in real life. The post-travel show-and-tells mashed up with the travel blog, became the trans-media, social practice, collaborative event that it is today. At each event we share stories, food, music, photography and tea from one country. I believe that personal stories create understanding and empathy. And we need more of them at a time when information, true or false, is so easily shared around the world.

While researching how I wanted to produce Tea Afar events, I came across “An Essay on Tea.”** Written in 1756, an English doctor wrote 25 letters warning British society women about the dangers of consuming this new drink from China. At first, I found the reprimands, with its severely proper language, funny. And then I read the essay again, reading between the lines this time. What saw was fear, fear of others and cultures not akin to ours. Being fearful of what we don’t know is a destructive way to view the world.

In 2004 when mobile phones were not yet easily accessible, and social media not yet useful, I took my first major trip, overland through West Africa. I was alone for three months. But not truly alone. In every new place, someone adopted me. It was in the remote villages of Mali where I first adopted the ceremony of tea. My instinct was to resist it. Who wants hot tea in the high heat of the Sahara desert? But over and over, "Welcome, sit, let's have tea." It became my favorite moment and not just in Mali. The six year old me who was not at all interested in tea and my mother’s gift of a “real china” tea set had grown up.

From The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh invites us to “Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves—slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.” For me, travel and tea are self-care. Traveling is as much stillness as it is moving. Tea is as moving as it is still. One of my favorite travel writers and thinkers, Pico Iyer, believes that being still creates a greater appreciation for all that we do. He suggests that all of our experiences are had through the lens of our state of mind. The journey of turning what we’ve seen into insight can last a lifetime. We can create journeys of stillness in our everyday lives without going to the other side of the world.

I’ve been asked, why tea? For me the thirst for tea is twofold: a desire for the taste and for the ritual. Tea is the medium, the catalyst for gathering. It brings people together to pause for a moment, to tell stories of the day, to shift modes from hectic to relaxed. It fosters connection and communion. Whether at home or on the road in a not-so-familiar land, the ritual of tea can create safe space, across language barriers, politics and war. And it just so happens that much of the world drinks tea. There is much to be learned from a single leaf that is brewed in as many variations as the people who touch them. This is why tea. Because it is an invitation, a welcome to another culture, that could just as much be the same as the home you feel when you hold a cup in your hand by yourself at the end of a hectic day.

I’m not always traveling, and even when I am, I have a small daily ritual. I make tea the slow way, boiling water in a kettle on the stove. I notice everything: the smell of tea leaves, the color of the tea, the craft and color of the dishes. It’s an active mediation, a moment of mindfulness, full sensory awareness. What does your ritual look like? Frothy, sweetened bitter green tea with mint like Senegalese attaya? Milk tea, creamy with heat and spices like Nepalese chai? Or Black tea with saffron and rosewater like Iranian chaay. Who will you invite to the table? What will you eat? What stories will you share?

My father drinks tea nearly every night. Always herbal, lots of honey. This is my inheritance: travel, story, tea, and somewhere, that miniature china tea set from my mother.

—April

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* The Negro Motorist Green Book was an annual guidebook for African-American roadtrippers published from 1936 to 1966. It provided “Vacation Without Aggravation,” listings safe places to eat, sleep, purchase gas and find entertainment, before civil rights were legislated.

** An essay on tea : considered as pernicious to health, obstructing industry, and impoverishing the nation : with a short account of its growth, and great consumption in these kingdoms : with several political reflections : in twenty-five letters addressed to two ladies. Hanway, Jonas, 1712-1786. Published [London :H. Woodfall,1756]

April 2016

Senegal is. . .

Fish salted air between the Sahel and the sea

Fat and majestic baobab trees

Quiet islands, sand dunes, and a pink lake

Slave dungeons, haunted and humid

Donkey and goat traffic in the streets

Small European cars with shoulder to rib passengers

Men who fish with elaborately carved boats

Talking drums, fast feet and fluid dancing

Midnight sabar dances on sand packed streets

Shea buttered skin and easy smiles

Instant family, open arms and forever bonds

The Baye Falle, The Mouride and the Sufi

Four wives and nine lives

Intricate hair designs and bleached complexions

Lean-to huts and luxury mid-rises

Filmmakers, authors, singers

Painters, poets, and prophets

Woven textiles and hand made baskets

Fabric, fabric, fabric

French baguettes filled with lentils and meat

Many fruits, strange, sour and sweet

Fish stew and onion smothered everything

Café touba, tiny coffee, spicy and sweet

Tea, dramatically poured, hot and sweet

Elongated greetings in call and response