Universal drinks

There is a universality to coffee/tea. I haven't been anywhere yet where people didn't engage in some sort of socializing that centered around one or both of these drinks. In England, whenever I entered any sort of dorm/home/flat someone, no matter what, offered me a cup of tea. And if anyone was upset, then tea was absolutely necessary. In France one could sit and watch people and chat with friends for hours over a single espresso. Coffee drunk closest to the street cost more, because it was closest to all the people there were to watch. Italy, it could be an espresso, or a cappuccino. In Austria, coffee served with water to combat dehydration. In Turkey, a strong cup of thrice boiled thick coffee mixed with cardamon. Go farther east in the same country and the coffee becomes as thick as oil.

In Senegal we had three cups of tea after lunch and dinner. The first was strong; the second, made using the same tea leaves as the first, was much sweeter; the third was practically sugar water. This progression of sweetness symbolized how friendships grow sweeter over time. It took between one and three hours to get all three glasses. To leave before the second cup was rude.

Here, guests are always served tea, it's normally basic black tea with two scoops of sugar. If you are lucky, you get mint. Women, tea ladies as we call them, set out stands and sell tea. They make a fantastic tea with milk, which I rarely drink because normally only men sit in public like that with tea. Too bad for me.

American culture has it's own way of expressing this tea/coffee social experience. The coffee shop culture is in. And, we don't just have tea with a few variations, one lump of sugar or two; we have all kinds of drinks, lattes, macciatos, caramel macciatos, iced blended beverages, iced beverages. Some are borrowed, some are variations of the borrowed and some are so far from the original I feel just fine calling them our own as much as anything else could be. Yes, our culture loves having options, and in that, we have made this universal of coffee and tea our own as much as anything else. We also love other cultures, and that is obvious in the myriad of coffee shop options as well. Just read the backs of all the Tazo Tea boxes.

Perhaps this anthropological playground shows us a few things. One, we need people. Truth is, we can drink this stuff on our own, but we like to drink it with others. We like to sip, and take our time, savoring taste and relationship. We like to talk while holding a hot drink, laugh with something in our hands. We like the community built around it. We like going to a cafe where people know our names, where we feel familiar and comfortable. We like being able to sit and relax in public, not just our homes.

Inuit peoples have 26 words for snow. I think that we should develop more words in our vocabulary for coffee. To be sure, we have quite a few already, but we can do better. It would make life easier for a coffee shop employee if he could call out a vanate instead of vanilla nonfat latte. And to any major corporately owned/former employer coffee company reading this, this blog is time stamped. You'll need to pay up if you want to use it.

TV

I watched TV today at my friend's house. Normally we watch English TV, but today it was all Arabic. I thought you might be interested in what we watched. We started with the Martha Stewart of the Arab world. She taught us how to prepare a WHOLE sheep. So she had an entire skinned sheep on her counter. To keep from getting her arms dirty, she wrapped them in tin foil. I imagine that if I had been at her house that night, I would have loved the meal that she prepared. But, my eyes are not conditioned to watching that kind of cooking on Jaime Oliver's show (my favorite cooking show).

Then we watched a soap opera from the UAE.

Then we watched Egypt's old movie channel, though I did not know there was one. We watched some movie from the seventies about a young engaged woman who wanted to be a singer. She somehow got on some kids' show dressed up as a kid, but fell in love with the producer of the show (also engaged). It was.... interesting.

Then we watched a soap opera from another country.

Then we watched the cooking lady make juice.

Then we watched Tom and Jerry.

Then we ate. I LOVE local food.

Superhero

I don't necessarily like the fact that I can say, "When I was young...." followed by a slew of different ways that things used to be, but I can, so I might as well embrace it. When I was young, and people watched TV, they normally just watched it if they were home at night. If they had some shows that they particularly enjoyed, they might have taped them so they could watch them later. But, they didn't watch their favorite shows all at once, but over the course of a year.

Also, when I was young, as now, I had extreme difficulty in putting down a good book. Books that grab me take me well into the night with their plot twists and character development. Take A Thousand Splended Suns, for example. Hosseni writes such a full, eloquent and gripping story, that I could not put the book down and finished it in less than a day.
Now, the problem is, there is such a thing nowadays called as DVD box sets. DVD box sets have entire seasons of TV shows on just a few CD's. So, what would normally be watched over the course of many months, can be watched in a significantly shorter time period. There were not a few popular TV shows that I didn't watch in America. I wasn't home, and didn't mind that I was missing out on what everyone was talking about at Starbucks the next day (though my roommate and I did have our favorites that we would watch faithfully). But here, my life is different, and there are these DVD box sets just sitting around when I have free time, particularly this week. I was crazy sick, and after the first couple of days of solid sleep, I still had to stay in, but needed something to do. So, I started watching the DVD box set of Heroes, popular in America, but never seen by me. And, wow, that show has a great story line going on with fantastic plot twists. And, as you know from above, I like good stories. So, I've become a little bit addicted to this show, and don't know how normal people waited each week to watch each episode. But, that waiting kept them normal too, I suppose.

So, I of course had a dream about super heroes the other night, and dreamt that I too had a super hero ability. What was it, you ask? Could I fly, become invisible, have x-ray vision? No, much better. Whenever anyone in the world was late, I could get them to wherever they needed to be on time. I could use any super hero ability necessary to get someone to an engagement on time. At any moment I might be pulled from my everyday normal life and hear someone from far away lamenting about running late for work. I would of course shout, "GO, GO GET PEOPLE THERE ON TIME," and off I would fly to save the day. I suppose a bit of the local culture crept into that dream, as events rarely begin on time here.

He has gone

We drove through the village, saw the heavy awning and knew we were close. We walked in, I had not prepared myself, but should have done so, knowing that I was going to a funeral. The house was full of somber ladies. We shook each of their hands, saying blessings to each of them. Walking through a labyrinth of outdoor hallways, we greeted more women and finally arrived to the room of his widow. I rarely see sadness displayed in this place. Anger, frustration, even laughter I see daily, but rarely sadness. But it hung all over me today; it looked me in the eye as I looked at many of these women, as I looked at his widow. She wore the customary white dress, and sat on the bed with a white sheet. She wont leave the house for four months. Yesterday morning she was married to a 42 year old man who made beans everyday. By the end of the day she buried him. I saw her tears, her grief was heavy, I thought it might suffocate her. I wished blessings on her, and kept going, like everyone else. We sat outside with more women and I saw his mother. Her face was deeply scared with the marks of her tribe, full of wrinkles which showed that she had lived a long and difficult life in the desert, and covered with her mourning. She too wore the white dress. She looked empty, and no one talked to her. Women came in and greeted the others with high pitched crying. The air was stale. I was relieved to leave, but carried their burden with me to the car, then to the house.

Tricky Weather

So, I try to walk a good bit most days, because it's good for me, and it makes me feel good and there isn't much other exercise I can get without having to play a DVD, which I don't really like. It's been getting hotter, but only less than a month ago it was relatively comfortable. So, on one of these daily walks I found myself getting thirstier faster and just feeling hotter than normal. But, I thought, it can't be that hot because it was just nice the other day. No, it was definitely 110 degrees. Moral of the story--when you live in the desert and you feel like it might be hot outside, it's probably not all in your head.

I still await the hot season.

Walking

I should go to sleep. I find that I need more sleep here than back in the good ole USA. It's like the heat zaps a button on the top of my head that sends me to my bed/couch/floor like one of those toys I always wanted from Six Flags that collapses when you push up underneath it. That's how I feel. And the crazy hot stuff is still yet to come.

I loved reading Anne of Green Gables when I was a kid. Anne and Diana were more than best friends, they were kindred spirits. I've come to understand better what kindred spirits are. They are those people that understand your soul. No, they aren't people that will never have a conflict with you, will never hurt your feelings, will never drive you crazy, will always know exactly what you are thinking so you wont ever have to say it. But, they are those people that will smile, embrace you and walk through all of that with you, loving you no matter what, even when you are sure that you are unlovable. I'm thinking about the handful of those that I have had in my life. I am so thankful for them.

I'm not at a place where I can say I have a bosom friend. Because that is weird, even for Anne of Green Gables. Maybe it's just the culture difference between now and early 20th century Canada.

I wear my Chacos nearly everyday, and I walk A LOT (and I do it on purpose, so don't feel sorry for me about that). So, I find it odd that yesterday of all days I got two blisters on my heels. Strange.

I'm going to sleep now.

Test

Background information for this post: There is lots of trash on the ground here.

So, I had to get an HIV test the other day in order to get my stay visa. I will spare you the details of the actual test, but will express that standards many westerners are used to are not employed here (standards such as not digging phlegm out of one's mouth after drawing blood from one person and before drawing blood from another--I digress and have given you details). Anyway, after getting my test I still had the cotton ball the tech gave me to stop the bleeding. I didn't know what to do with it, and I refused just to throw it on the ground. Finally I saw a large metal trash can outside. So, I walked through a large pile of trash in order to throw my cotton ball in an empty trash can.

HA! Victory.

And also irony.