Tea

We have a dog. A sweet little insane puppy who we love and who drives us all bananas. So I drink my morning tea outside in the back garden now. So that this writhing mass of fur and face licks is more likely to pee outside than on the carpet, or the floor, or one of the bath mats, or on a beanbag chair, or in a corner of the basement where no one will ever know it was there.

And I’ve noticed something about drinking my tea outside in the cool(-ish), dark(-ish) morning. There’s a very specific taste and sensation to it that reminds me of something. It took me a few days to pinpoint it but I’ve figured it out. 

Camping tea. 

Specifically, African camping tea. 

To get the full effect, I’d need to be drinking out of an enamel mug and the tea would have to have the faint scent of campfire smoke or kerosene about it, but it’s pretty close. Somehow, more tea-like? More shrubby? Greener? Or is it the sting of heat against a cold mouth? 

I’m bougie now and drink imported Yorkshire Gold (Liptons? The horror. And don’t get me started on those triggering ‘Americans making tea videos.’). And I have a mug I prefer. A couple, actually. From local crafts fairs. Hand-thrown by women on Instagram with sensuous pottery videos. My favourite has little cat ears and makes a smiley face when you leave it upside down on the drying mat.

Back then, we were drinking whatever we could get our hands on. Loose-leaf local stuff in Sudan. Liptons from the tiny supermarket in St. Helena. The two main places I remember camping.

In Sudan, it was a week-long trip. A drive over bumpy dirt roads to a small town where we stayed in mud huts for the night and hired donkeys to carry our packs and tent up the side of a dead volcano. Up into temperate, green, water-trickled land so different from the hundreds of miles of dry, brown scrub surrounding it. Waking up to the kettle boiling on the camping stove. Steaming mugs of tea, thick slices of brown bread and scrambled eggs. Being cold. A rarity in a place of such extreme heat where the kitchen would often reach 120 degrees. Did we own jumpers? Or sweatshirts? I don’t remember. Or maybe we just drank it in. Starved of cool air, filling our lungs with it. 

By the time we were camping in St. Helena, I was a teenager. Sneaking chugs of beer and kisses in the dark as the adults laughed and sang around the fire. Morning came with a hangover and embarrassed glances. Does he really like me? But also tea. Probably those same blue enamel mugs from the volcano. Chipped now from their travels around the continents. The kettle was on a rack over the fire. Breakfast was probably sausages and refused by a queasy stomach. But the tea. Hot in the chilly, misty morning. Tea at its most tea-est.