Teatime for Cambodia

I’m having a hard time choosing between cappuccino and butter. So much so, that I think I’m going to have to stir a little of some, into the other. I’m choosing paint, in case you didn’t guess. I select paint colours with edible names ...(that’s what an ecovillage is about ...it’s co-housing obsessed with food ... planting it, growing it, cooking it, eating it, painting it).


And don’t knock fatty beverages. Think ‘Yak Tea’.
Yak butter tea ... from wikipedia Drinking butter tea is a regular part of Tibetan life. Before work, a Tibetan will typically down several bowlfuls of this tangy beverage, and it is always served to guests. Nomads are said to often drink up to 40 cups of it a day. Since butter is the main ingredient, butter tea is a very warming drink, providing lots of energy and is particularly suited to high altitudes. The butter also helps prevent chapped lips.
According to the Tibetan custom, butter tea is drunk in separate sips, and after each sip the host refills the bowl to the brim. Thus, the guest never drains his bowl; rather, it is constantly topped up. If the visitor does not wish to drink, the best thing to do is leave the tea untouched until the time comes to leave and then drain the bowl. In this way etiquette is observed and the host will not be offended.

Lately, I’ve been lying in bed, looking at the walls and musing over colours. I’m ready to make myself a nest. I want my bedroom to be irresistible at bedtime ... luxurious in squishy, downy pillows, redolent in red, purposeful in purple ( porpoiseful in the bathroom) ... with billowing quilts and wooly throws. I want to be pulled into bed and coerced into sleep by colour, comfort, warmth and abundance. I plan to learn how to sleep completely through the night (but that’s another subject).

This is a house worth investing my heart in. My walls are a canvas waiting to be filled. I run my hands over the timbers; I can feel the forest in them. The cordwood walls have all the pointillist colours of the mountain-side that the window frames in the view beyond. There’s blueberry winter-cane-red in my Persian carpet. The Korean garden’s shapes are lurking in there, too.

The colours and shapes outside, are the colours and shapes inside. It’s beautiful there, and it’s beautiful here. The joy of it! My heart jumps. And so, I have to take the black dog out, and down the lane to the pasture at the back ...as I always do, when my heart is bursting.
The colour of the Timothy hay is what I want for the walls of my bedroom. Creamy, tawny, beigey, tan/yellow. The Timothy is in pasture on the far side of the bank of blackberries that run along the stream. It’s not irrigated out there, but it could be later, when we have farmers planting and growing.
One of our young fathers was talking about irrigation last night at dinner. (We have village dinners in the common room on Tuesday nights now ... you’re invited, too ... 5:30pm) We have dinner and kids and lots of conversation. He’s a project manager at Hope International http://www.hope-international.com/index.php and oversees the installation of water wells in little villages in places like Cambodia. A single well in a village can make the difference between the children being healthy, and able to go to school, and not.

We have water. We have mains that come from the city and we have irrigation wells with a pump in a pumphouse and a system of pipes to get it to the nearer fields.

They don’t.

I’m standing in the field of hay, thinking about colour and water and Cambodia. And then it hits me with a wallop. Cambodia is no farther away than Cultus Lake ... on the other side of Vedder Mountain. As I stand still in the field, both Cultus and Cambodia are equally out of sight ... equally far away ... and equally close.
That means there’s a village on the other side of our beautiful pointillist mountain that doesn’t have what we have --- water, schools, and vegetable gardens.

I’ve been reading Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
That’s where I learned about drinking Yak tea. And pennies for children. http://www.penniesforpeace.org/ and what gives me the idea to collect coins for Cambodia in a pickle jar ... it’s now in the common room. Next time you’re there, a little loose change would be greatly appreciated.

I’m brewing some tea while I think about how to raise more money ... and I’m popping in a dap of butter into the cup for my chapped lips.
And do come for dinner on a Tuesday night. You don’t have to bring anything ... but please let us know you’re coming.

Hi Ann -
Just a quick comment re yak butter tea. When I was in Nepal many years ago, there were large numbers of Tibetan refugees there, fleeing the Chinese take-over of the country. They continued to make their yak tea butter, but because of the lower altitude, the boiling point for the water used for the tea was a lot higher, consequently the Tibetans were continually burning their lips with the far too hot water, they had to learn to let it cool off a bit before drinking. I always think of this when I hear of Yak butter tea, and the need we all have to adapt to different environments.
Love,
Jacqui Lehto