This past Saturday I participated in the Kalona Farmer’s Market. It was my second time there and it was really a beautiful day! One of the things I love most about being a vendor at these kinds of events is the opportunity to just chat with people, learn about them and geek out over tea together. I have learned so much and had so many incredible conversations in this space and I had an experience this past weekend that has been on my mind since, and I want to share it.
In the early afternoon during a lull, three Muslim women came up to my space. I was thrilled because I got to greet them with “As-salamu alaikum”, the traditional Arabic greetings Muslims use. It means “peace be upon you” and it is beautiful to say, and in my opinion everyone should be using it with everyone they meet. When my family and I lived in Chicago, I got the pleasure of using this greeting daily with the families and Muslim staff I worked with at a Head Start program, and I have missed having that connection. It was very refreshing to rekindle that with these women in Kalona, IA of all places: a thoroughly Amish community.
I gave my spiel to them and invited them to create their own tea sample from my blend options, which is how I’ve been doing samples at my markets so that people can see how versatile and easy to make my blends are. They were all very hesitant, but Fatima was less hesitant than the other two so she agreed to try. She had clearly never heard of masala chai and that was the blend she tried. Her verdict?
“I don’t care for this at all.”
Oof.
That’s fine! It happens sometimes. My blends are not (excuse me but I can’t help myself...) everyone’s cup of tea. I chuckled and said that was totally ok, no judgment from me. Fatima started speaking very quickly to the two other women, mostly in Arabic. I heard her say that it was not the kind of tea she was used to and that piqued my curiosity so I decided to go out on a limb and asked what kind of tea she normally drinks. She got very excited and, guys, I was not prepared. Fatima decided to teach me all about Maghrebi tea, which I had never heard of before. For the next 15 minutes, as they flitted between English and Arabic, I got a crash course in this delicious-sounding tea, complete with Google image results and recipe searches: how it is made (sometimes with rosemary or basil, or even almond!), where they drink it (North Africa chiefly), the customs surrounding it, the clear love they had for the ritual of drinking it. Maghrebi mint tea connected these women together strongly, and it connected them with their culture and religion. It may have all seemed like normal conversation to passersby, but I could tell there was great power and emotion in their passion for Maghrebi tea. And they connected me to all of that, graciously and with such enthusiasm I was hooked and asked them as many questions as I could think of.
Why am I telling you about this? Well, I think this was such an important experience. Too often in our American culture, I see divisive and polarizing opinions that move away from unity and hurtle towards brokenness. Our communities are so broken. They are broken culturally, religiously, racially. So much of what we hear on the news or any social media site confirms these divisions over and over and over, primes us for it, and it can take the smallest disagreement over the stupidest things to widen a tiny gap. It’s tiring and altogether too easy to be infected by it.
But it is also SO EASY to combat that. It can be as simple as asking a curious question. If I would have pouted about these women not liking my tea and dismissed their value to me purely based on selfish motives, first of all I think there are plenty of people who would have said I was justified. But that’s short-sighted: I would have missed out on an incredible experience. I got to geek out with these women I may never have talked with otherwise. Over something as simple as tea.
Point One: Tea can be a great equalizer: it is the world’s most popular drink and every culture and nationality has their favored versions. Even if there’s nothing else to connect over, chances are you can talk about tea. It’s one of the things I love most about owning a tea business.
Point Two: This one simple topic brought me into a whole new world of discovery, simply because I didn’t let an opportunity for hurt and division rule how I viewed these women or their opinions of my product. I firmly believe that if we work harder on finding ways to connect instead of ways to hate, our communities will be healthier and stronger and more lovely. This experience was an eye opener for me. It’s made me more conscious of the small moments, the interactions I have with people daily and how I approach them. Am I looking for a way to disagree with them, to dislike them, even subconsciously? Why can’t my disposition be to find a way to love them? To find common ground? How can I get better at that?
Maybe all we need to do is offer each other a cup of tea, and see what happens.
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