Tea in a Berber home
Morocco 1997 A Berber Home in the Desert
This woman is Ali’s mother. That is what Umm Ali means. It’s also the name of a dessert popular in the Middle East. Umm Ali sits in her simple adobe house in the desert and pours tea. She does this many times a day. Whenever a guest arrives, or a neighbor, or a friend, the tea things are brought out and fresh tea is prepared. Sometimes there is fresh mint and sometimes not. There is always plenty of sugar, broken from cones about a foot tall…just as our colonial ancestors used.
Umm Ali pours tea from a small, chipped enamel tea pot. These are the favorite tea pots for family use. The large pewter pots with the scimitar shaped spout are used when there is a large group. The tea kettle to her left is set on a butane bottle. They use this fuel source to heat the water for tea and to cook meals. The tagine is set where the kettle is… in the photo. (A tagine is a pottery dish with a conical lid and it is also the name of the stew that is prepared using that dish.)
I’ve often thought that the Moroccan way of cooking and eating is clever. The food is cooked and served and eaten from the same vessel. Forks and knives are not necessary. Bread, torn into small bites, is used to scoop up the food. There is no kitchen full of dishes to wash when the meal is finished! That is what I mean by clever.
The Berber families I knew didn’t have much money. In fact, they had very little. What they did have was time: time to chat and sip tea…time to hold and amuse a toddler…time to prepare a quick meal of eggs and peppers at a moment’s notice.
Sooner or later, when the conversation would wane, the men would ask me to get them a visa for America. Of course, I couldn’t do it. I’d tell them that in America, they might get a job and have more money, but they wouldn’t have time. That no American man sits for hours on a weekday afternoon sipping tea and talking with friends. That we barely have time to say ‘hello’. Not having time to visit for long hours? The idea brought a puzzled look to their faces. They turned away from me to discuss this among themselves. They didn’t bring up the visa request again.
It was easy for me to take photos when I was a guest in a Berber home. They may have wondered why I took so many photos, but they soon accepted that it made me happy and they’d often beckon me to come and watch a sheep-shearing or something similar. I’d always have my camera by my side and I’d shoot whomever took my fancy. I was a guest and that gave me a special status.
Contact Ali at www.adventureswithali.com to have tea with a Berber family and enjoy other Moroccan adventures.