Words by Zuhra F. Abdullahi
When one thinks of tea-drinking countries, places like China, India, and even Japan and Russia might come to mind. All of these countries have long histories and a deep relationship with tea. Even Britain’s relationship with tea is relatively recent in comparison.
However, there is one part of the world that has a strong culture of drinking tea that most don’t think of: West Africa. In my home country of Nigeria, and in Northern Nigeria in particular, drinking tea is more than a pastime, but is part of a larger practice of hospitality that is central to our culture. The Hausa people are the largest ethnic group in sub saharan Africa, and one of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria. For many Hausa people in Northern Nigeria, tea is drunk for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and is an important part of entertaining guests. Today in Nigeria, almost any hot beverage is referred to as tea. Black tea is most common, but green tea has become increasingly popular, as well as hot chocolate and other powdered drinks that are mixed with hot water. For breakfast, hot beverages are served and eaten with a very soft loaf of bread, commonly known as sugar or milk bread.
Tea in Northern Nigeria is a borrowed tradition that has ultimately become a part of our story. Our movements up and down the Sahel, primarily for trade or the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, heavily influenced us. Eventually, tea trickled down to the Sahelian region and Nigeria through trade routes in North Africa, such as from Morocco, where historically their traders have traveled far and wide, and their tea cultures made their way south over time. According to the tea-blog, Destination Tea, the origins of drinking tea in Northwestern Africa came about because of the relief that the refreshing drink gave from the harsh Sahara weather, and drinking sweetened mint tea became a ritual. This ritual is found in the saying: “It is said that the first cup of tea is as bitter as life; the second as sweet as love; the third as gentle as death.”
Today the practice of drinking tea is shared across Northern Nigerian states. In addition to the similarities in culture and traditions, they all have a large population of Muslims. Nigeria’s primary religions are Islam and Christianity, approximately half the population is Christian, and the other is Muslim. Traditional religions are practiced, but these two are the main ones. Given that Northern Nigeria shares religious practices and trade with countries in north and central Africa, for example Niger and Chad, it is understandable why tea culture spread widely and is more pronounced throughout this region.
Hospitality is something that Nigerians are incredibly proud of and expect. When we are hosting, we want our guests to be comfortable and to feel like they are a part of our family. This is why you’ll often hear Nigerians say “relax,” or “feel free,” or “my house is your house.” The simple joy of receiving and entertaining visitors or visiting a loved one plays out in unique ways across the country. While many Nigerians drink tea, for most, it is one of other hot drinks to chug down along with breakfast at home or in offices during meetings. It isn’t a beverage that is planned for ahead of time or that has a designated time of day similar to Britain’s afternoon tea. Nor is it particularly used to entertain guests by all Nigerians, and when it comes to the Hausa people, tea is special and somewhat elaborate. Usually, it’s black tea with milk, sometimes with lemon, other times it is loose leaf black tea boiled with different spices and herbs like cloves, ginger, cardamom, mint, and lemongrass. These days people like the convenience and many options that tea bags provide.
Over the years, how guests are entertained has evolved depending on the resources available. Traditionally, for Hausas, guests are greeted, offered a place to sit and a bowl of water on arrival. In modern times, for a Hausa woman like me, it is a knock on the door that leads to smiles and greetings. After being ushered into the parlor and seated, the question follows, “would you like tea or something to drink?” My answer is always: “Yes.” In the rare cases that it is “No”, it usually comes with a slight regret as the tray of water, tea, drinks, and snacks are presented anyway. You see, it is considered polite to, at the very least, drink something when you’re a guest in someone’s home. Many times, the host ignores it when the guest says no. The tray is presented anyway.
On some occasions, if the food is refused for any reason, some hosts get offended. I remember one time I had returned to Nigeria from England after being away in boarding school. It was, and still is, customary for us to make rounds to several homes to greet our extended family. Of course, I couldn’t eat again at my cousin’s house. I had already eaten at the three previous houses we visited just before that. Later, I heard from another family member that she had expressed her disappointment because her mother had spent time preparing snacks for our visit. That was the last time I planned to see more than three families a day whenever I was home. Eventually, I think they figured it out because they started packing to-go boxes to take with us whenever we didn’t eat what was presented. Living in New York City, these are the funny little things that I am most nostalgic about when I think of home.
It wasn’t until I came to New York City that I realized that I had always assumed that all Nigerians drink tea as much as we do. I offered some tea and some dambun nama– a kind of meat floss – to a friend from Edo state, in southern Nigeria. To my surprise, he said that he didn’t grow up drinking tea, but he noticed that Northern Nigerians drink a lot of tea. Granted, having tea is not just cultural. It’s also a personal preference; offering tea or drinks to guests with traditional snacks, specifically meat, in various forms, is a very common northern custom. Across Nigeria, finger foods are served at parties. They are known as small chops, and they have become a part of the national cuisine. Ozoz Sokoh is a Nigerian food blogger and culinary anthropologist who delves deeper into this in her article, “A Possible History of Nigerian Small Chops.” A lot of the snacks in the north aren’t common everywhere else.
The most interesting of these snacks are the traditional meats unique to the north, dambun nama, kilishi, and tsire. The first two snacks represent forms of meat preservation that have been practiced for many generations. Dambun nama is beef, chicken, or ram meat seasoned and boiled with spices and aromatics, then shredded by hand and tossed in a pan until it’s golden brown, the final product mentioned earlier is quite close to the look and consistency of cotton.
The second is kilishi, which is widely known across West Africa and Nigerians at home and throughout the diaspora. Its popularity is quite legendary. I took some to a party in Brooklyn once and before I knew it was gone, eaten mainly by North Africans from Cameroon and Chad. It is made with thin slices of dried meat covered with ground spices, dried peppers, garlic, ginger mixed with kulikuli, a ground savory peanut cookie. It is our version of beef jerky, and it’s spicy and flavorful. It comes wrapped in layers of brown paper which helps soak up the residual fat. Tsire in Hausa means skewered meat, it is also popularly known as Suya in Nigeria and abroad. Suya literally means to fry, however it’s meat that is grilled over fire. It can count as a meal but is primarily eaten in small quantities. It is covered with spices and kulikuli. KuliKuli is made from groundnuts that have had the oil separated from them, leaving only the pulp after it is extracted. It is then made into different shapes and fried in the oil from which it was extracted until it’s crispy. It is served as a snack and used as a topping for various other dishes. Suya is also very popular throughout Nigeria. It is not only an evening indulgence like it used to be in Northern Nigeria, where it originated. Now it is available in many places throughout the day, but the best comes from the traditional spaces and people that have made it professionally for a long time. Northern Nigerian’s don’t always eat meat with tea, but people now reach for tea when snacking.
Tea is widely available, it’s a way to start the day, entertain guests, nurture oneself, and get centered throughout the day. Among the middle class and the elite, it is common to offer tea, traditional drinks, fresh or packaged fruit juices, sodas, savory and sweet snacks in addition to water. In modern times, tea with sweet and savory snacks is a common practice. Those who can’t afford fancy snacks or simply want company, head over to the neighborhood Mai Shayi, or the “The Tea Man”, and they sit with the business owner by roadsides for an affordable cup of tea with either a quick breakfast, a snack, or a late-night meal.
These tea stalls have existed in almost every Northern Nigerian city for as long as I can remember, and they continue to evolve. The items on the table vary. There are yellow boxes of Lipton tea, spices, Nescafe instant coffee, chocolate beverages, like Milo, Ovaltine, different brands of powdered and evaporated milk. There were also packs of cubed sugar, fresh bread, margarine, eggs, small stoves, frying pans, plates, utensils, and countless other items of the trade. I sometimes watched from afar as the Mai Shayi made tea anyway the customer liked. They also made fried omelets with crispy edges in hot pans, and then carefully placed them in the center of a loaf of fresh soft bread.
Growing up, we would take road trips from Lagos, in southern Nigeria where we lived, to Kaduna in the north, where our cousins lived. My fondest memory of Kaduna is enjoying mint tea with my auntie’s gatekeepers, known as gatemen. They are responsible for security, opening the gate for cars, washing them, and odd jobs around the house. These particular men were from Niger, a country on the northern border where workers typically crossed over to Nigeria in search of work. They always had tea in the evening after Maghrib, the fourth of the five daily prayers Muslims observe. It was impossible to miss this time as the call for prayer sounded, to this day it can be heard from anywhere in most neighborhoods.
I remember coal burning under a small fire by their quarters as we all sat gathered around on woven mats, sometimes straw, and sometimes plastic. I remember the smell of black tea and fresh mint leaves. All the kids loved the enormous amount of sugar they’d allow us to add to it and the showmanship it involved. Cooling the tea by pouring it from what looks like an impossible height, but it somehow lands directly into the small thin glass tea cups it was presented in. This method of cooling tea was likely also passed down to Mai Shayis from north Africa. What is evident is that this is now a part of our way of making tea in Northern Nigeria. This memory is my only experience with anything close to being at a Mai Shayi’s table, and it is a memory that has stood out for me.
As a kid, whenever we passed by, I was curious about the conversations happening among the men who frequented these roadside tea stands. I don’t remember seeing women at the Mai Shayi’s table. I only assumed, knowing the cultural background, that it wasn’t a place for women. It was a place for men to kill time, socialize, and leave their worries behind. I read once that places like these are for men to manage their boredom and wait for their futures to improve. In the Hausa language, “zaman kashe wando” means “sitting that kills pants.” I find the literal nature of the hausa language funny and very accurate. The description must be referring to a specific group of men, as in modern times most people are busy, therefore do not have that kind of time to kill.
Recently tea stalls or the Mai Shayi’s tables have evolved to serve not just tea, bread, and snacks, but have developed a culture of serving instant noodles as well. I have memories of my late younger brother and cousin heading outside after Maghrib, the evening prayer, to the Mai Shayi around the corner from our house. I was surprised by how they trusted the Mai Shayi’s cooking and loved the noodles. They were both adventurous at a very young age, and I’m not quite sure what my parents thought about that. It’s not that I ever wanted to be a “Tea Girl”. It is just that I never saw a girl or women there. I never imagined going to sit at a Mai Shayi, but there are many other fun ways I and other girls or women experience tea culture. We learned how to make the snacks that feed our friends and families, and most of us have a custom of hospitality that is almost second nature. Most importantly, instead of continuously wondering what it’s like to be among men in a culture that seems to be set in stone, we enjoy and create our paths. These were memories of home; the tea and snacking memories that fueled my curiosity about tea.
A couple of years ago, I had a conversation with Halima Zawiya, a rice farmer and a chef catering to clients in Nigeria. During our discussion, we both realized how similar our childhood memories were, as Northern Nigerian women. Our interests were both nurtured by our families. We are both in love with our roots, traditional foods, and we also fuse them with other influences we have come across. We were both educated and supported by our families to follow our passions and started cooking at a very young age, both of us had some formal training. I trained with french chefs at the International Culinary Center, and Halima trained with a Saudi Arabian chef.
We discussed how each of our families made tea, and hers was heavier on the spices bay leaves, mint, lemongrass, cloves, ginger, sometimes cardamom. In comparison, mine was lighter, with milk or just black with sugar. We also talked fondly about receiving guests and shared beautiful memories of our grandfathers and how they spoiled us. We reminisced about the tea and other things we had for breakfast and our street food escapades when we visited them. One such snack was “Wainar flour,” which means “Flour Pancake” in Hausa. A delicious thin, savory crepe made simply with flour, water, red onions, hot peppers, and stock cubes. Lining up with kids by the street was always worth the wait, for a taste of the crispy edges formed from frying them in hot palm oil. Coincidentally we’re both from Kano, a state in the northwest, and our families’ hometown. A city where tea stalls and street food vendors can be found on every corner. The things we soaked up, the memories, experiences, and what we learned from the women around us are things we don’t appreciate enough. The confidence to take advantage, learn and use them to build ourselves, especially when we have support and opportunity.
Growing up I didn’t like tea much because I thought I only had a few options: black lipton tea with evaporated milk and sugar, black tea with sugar, and chocolate drinks like Milo or Ovaltine. I also didn’t understand what my parents knew, the value of taking breaks to get centered throughout the day and the health benefits. It was just something we had at breakfast everyday, and what our parents asked us to make several times a day. Although I loved the part where we would cut pieces of bread, dunk it in the hot chocolate, and hurry to eat it right before it became too soggy. As an adult, I have discovered so many ways to make tea that I can’t pick a favorite. I realized that adults had more fun with tea than children did. Perhaps it was served to us that way for convenience or because of the nutrients children are expected to consume. I’m not sure. My parents, aunties, uncles, and almost everyone older than I am have always loved hot beverages. Mama drinks tea with milk and sugar, and Baba drinks black coffee; both drink them several times a day. I used to tell mama that tea is boring and meant for older people. Well, here I am now as an adult writing about tea. So, in a way I think I was right.
Sources
Diawara, Mamadou, and Ute Röschenthaler. "Green Tea in the Sahel: The Social History of an Itinerant Consumer Good." Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne Des Études Africaines 46, no. 1 (2012): 39-64. Accessed April 9, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43860320.
Zuhra is a chef focused on curating events promoting northern Nigerian food and culture. She’s a graduate of the International Culinary Center, and the New York University's MA Food Studies Program. She enjoys writing, hosting and exploring restaurants. You can find her at www.xuhsworld.com and @xuhsworld.