I have no idea what part of Nyahururu we were in, but the house we visited was beautiful. There were comfortable sofa sets and coffee tables with plenty of stools on the side. Tea was quickly brought to the table on a tray with beautiful china on it. The tea was in a beautiful ceramic tea pot with floral design, matching ceramic tea cups on saucers (ikombe cia kauru na gathani) sugar in a dish and everybody had their own small spoon. Wow. I had never experienced this kind of service before.
Tea in our house was served in a kettle (Birika) alright but it was not ceramic. Our Birika was enamel coated, a coating that chipped off easily when dropped on a hard surface, exposing the steel underneath which then started rusting after coming into contact with air and water. Our cups were actually mugs made of the same material as the tea kettles. We called them Fifteen. I don’t know where the name originated from but that was how we knew them. Maybe they costed fifteen cents. Who knows? I had bigger problems sitting infront of me.
Talk of traumatizing a rural girl from OlKalou. Our tea was made in a big sufuria and sugar was added during the cooking process. Mother measured everything with the palm of her hand and it came out perfect, every time. The tea was then sieved (guchungwo) into a huge kettle then poured into the Fifteen mugs. Simple and straight forward. Right? Imagine that same girl thrust into a situation where a tray with so many dishes is set before her just to have a cup of tea. To make matters worse, those dishes are breakable, unlike ours that just chip off the coating and are still usable.
Anyhow, there was tea in front of me and I needed to drink it, somehow. I pulled myself together and followed our hosts cue. I added sugar carefully without spilling it all over, stirred my tea with the small spoon like a pro and drank my tea without dropping the beautiful ceramic cup or saucer to the floor and breaking them, a disaster that had plagued my mind from the time we left home in OlKalou.
You can imagine my relief when the tea ceremony ended without a hitch. And by the way, there was buttered bread, which I enjoyed thoroughly. I was on cloud Nine. This visit was turning out to be the best thing that happened to me in a while.
