Bedou Tea

Another one of my favorite memories...

There was a camp move, and all our trailers were being slowly transported on large trucks to a new campsite. That means for most of the day you are in the middle of the Omani desert with no room, no bathroom, no office. Just a lot of desert, and if you are lucky, a seat in an airconditioned pickup truck.

After several hours of sitting around the campsite-to-be and doing nothing, I got inspired and took a walk with a nice thick book. A little ways away I found a random wooden crate and a cheap plastic blanket on a nice sandy incline. They looked like they had been there for a while. So, I laid myself down on the blanket and began to read. Maybe two hours later an Omani guy showed up in a truck and got out. I was embarassed, because it looked like this was his stuff.
To be honest I'm not sure how I didn't get overwhelmed with awkwardness and leave immediately, but somehow I ended up sitting and talking to the guy.

He was a tall, thin, weathered looking guy with a kind of scratchy voice. He was setting up a sheesha shack. There are always a couple of those a little ways around camp where omani guys go after work to hang out, light a camp fire, and smoke sheesha. I'm always jealous of them.

We had a rudimentary conversations with my small arabic vocabulary, and his equally small english vocabulary. With these conversations, it's a struggle communicating, but it's rewarding because every little bit you communicate feels like an accomplishment. I learned various things about him. He was a bedou from somewhere in the vicinity of Ibri. He had a problems with maggots getting in the eyes of his goats. His mother died a few years ago and he missed her because he was very close to her.

He made some tea, or some "shaayy" as they call it in arabic. So, I learned how to make Omani bedou tea. This version included a few tablespoons of loose black tea, water, a can and a half of condensed milk, a couple spoons of Nescafe, and about half a cup of sugar. All this he put into a beat up looking tin pot. Then he took one solid hunk of wood, poured something flamible over it, set it next to some large stones. He lit the wood and balanced the pot on the stones. I made myself the official stirrer while he hammered hunks of wood into the ground to make a windbreak for the future sheesha shack.

I admired the bag from which he took out his tea ingredients. It was a large ladies purse, in a purple velvet tigerskin motif. With sequins. He seemed completely oblivious to the irony. I guess to him it was just a thing that he could carry stuff in. Who knows where he got it from.

I was amazed by how he didn't in any way act wierd around me. This is Oman where it is not normal for men and women to mix. Yet he wasn't all formal and standoffish, but he wasn't sleezily overfriendly either. Maybe that is the way it is if you live in the desert and you are mostly on your own with a lot of goats? Any other human being...male, female, brown, white...you are just glad they aren't a goat.

After a cup and a half of tea I thought I should go back to camp. So got up and I took a bit of water and rinsed my cup out and wiped it clean. He smiled when I did that and said "same same bedou". And that was the best compliment I could ask for.