Tea or coffee anyone?

When I was growing up in rural Ireland in the 60s and 70s (yep…. I’ve totally give the game away now!), we only ever drank tea in our home… which was the case in most, if not all, the homes around us.  We had an orange tea-leaf dispenser on the wall and with a push of a button the leaves went into the pre-heated tea-pot and was brought back to the boil and then put on a place mat in the middle of the kitchen table under a tea-cosy to keep it nice and hot.  And so began the endless cups of tea and the constant ‘hot drops’ that seemed to make a seamless connection between dinner and tea time.  We drank it out of mugs (except my Mum who said that tea always tasted better out of a china cup) according to our taste – my Mum liked to give it to us children, fresh from the pot while it was still a little ‘weak’ and then when it had become a lot stronger she served my Dad.  So much of my childhood memories are caught up in those never-ending tea drinking sessions, including all the times my Mum and her two sisters would sit after dinner, when all the family had been fed and left the table, drinking tea and putting all the world to rights.  I can still remember that wonderful thrill of anticipation when, in my bedroom upstairs, studying, I would hear my Mum plug in the kettle downstairs and I would know that tea was on its way!

When we had special guests or special occasions like Christmas and Easter, my Mum would bring out the best china that was kept in the sideboard in the dining room.  She had 4 sets, 3 of which were wedding presents, and she would pull out the extensions in the dining room table, lay the tablecloth  with matching cups, saucers, silver cutlery,  along with side plates, a cake plate and milk jug and sugar bowl. And then she would bring in the home-made scones and buns, biscuits and maybe some left over Christmas cake (which lasted for months).  I love my mugs but I still remember watching and listening to the sound of hot freshly brewed tea being poured into a china cup and can honestly say there is nothing like it in all the world.

It was my sister who first brought coffee into our house and I can remember hating the smell of it.  As time went on, my parents would sometimes have a milky coffee to keep them going if dinner was going to be a bit on the late side, and gradually I noticed that guests were as much offered coffee as tea.  I can’t remember when, in my child-rearing years I started to drink coffee in preference to tea, but a lot of my memories, and that of my children, are connected to coffee.  The times I sat on the kitchen floor on the other side of the counter in the hope of some privacy, while one of the children tip-toed up to me and asked tentatively ‘have you had your coffee now Mum?’, in the hopes that I had materialized into a semi-human being.  I drank endless mugs, often lukewarm or cold, until the wonderful purchase of a microwave.  Then I would look fruitlessly for my half-drunk mug of coffee, give up, make another mug, drink a little, get distracted, find it cold and put it in the microwave to heat it up… only to find the missing mug of coffee.  My eldest daughter still remembers the day I ran out of coffee, with me frantically searching the cupboards for the coffee I was so sure was there… but wasn’t.  It may sound like an addiction, but strangely enough I am not addicted to coffee as I don’t suffer the effects of withdrawal when I don’t have it.  When I fast the whole month of Ramadan, I may drink a handful of mugs of coffee throughout the whole month, if that, and not suffer from headaches or any other physical symptoms of withdrawal.  But I miss the company of coffee – to me it’s like a little treat to myself throughout the day, and I love sharing a mug with friends (such an odd saying that – ‘sharing a mug with friends’ because there’s nobody I love enough to actually share one single mug of coffee with….well ok, maybe my husband if he actually drank coffee and my Mum or Dad if they were still around, and, at a pinch, my children.).  There have been times when my husband has offered me a cup of tea or coffee, gone off and made it, brought it back to me and then sat down…..without one for himself.  And I have tried to explain that it’s nice to SHARE one with someone… meaning that they have one too.  But he just can’t understand why I can’t enjoy my cup on my own, when he doesn’t particularly want one himself.  When he then said that he would compromise and bring in a cup of….. water and drink it with me, I knew that this was one of those cultural battles that should never be waged as there just was no winning side.

For me afternoon coffee in Algeria brought back memories of my childhood and…. the Japanese tea ceremony…. only with coffee instead of tea!  The Algerians don’t have ‘elevenses’ or ‘pick-me-ups’, or in fact any kind of snacks in between meals, which is probably much healthier, I suppose.  If I don’t sound convinced it’s because I love the whole idea of stopping work, whatever the pastime, and having a mini-break with a cuppa regardless of the beverage of choice.  They drink coffee in the morning and again in the afternoon and that’s it.  If there aren’t any guests then it’s a less formal affair, but if there are guests then it’s more like ‘high tea’. For me to serve coffee or tea to ex-pat guests means asking what way they like it, making it in the kitchen and then plonking the mug in front of them.  But in Algeria you have to have: a large tray preferably ornamental, on which you put a set of matching coffee cups and saucers which are usually slightly smaller than the English/Irish tea cups, these are for milky coffee, and then another set of even smaller ones (to my mind not much bigger than a thimble) for black coffee.  With that you also have a matching sugar bowl and another bowl for the teaspoons, some people put water in this and others don’t, along with a serviette holder.  In addition, of course, you need two flasks, again as ornamental as you can find, a large one for the hot milk and a small one for the coffee. Then of course there’s the plates of cakes (usually around 3 different varieties is sufficient) and the individual plates for each person. And… you need all this in duplicate because most of the time you serve the men separately from the women. 

I had a lot of help with my first time hosting a coffee afternoon as my long suffering sister-in-law gave me all the accoutrements for the occasion and I roped in her daughter to be ‘Mum’ and serve the guests.  The second time, I again borrowed all the accessories, but this time I had to do all the serving myself and found myself getting very nervous when the room went quiet and all eyes were on me.  When you’ve sussed out what each person likes, usually ‘nus-nus’, half milk, half coffee, and the right amount of sugar, again, usually 2 teaspoons (I thought at one time that this was almost compulsory in Algeria as I never saw anyone having any less or more than this amount), you then put the teaspoon in the cup and give it to the guest.  On this particular day, however, I took the teaspoon out of the cup and handed it to the guest and was told that I should serve it IN the cup, which goes totally against my sense of propriety as I think it looks a lot better placed on the saucer and then given to the guest.  I then had to admit that I didn’t have enough teaspoons to go round.  The next week my husband’s sister-in-law turned up with… two packs of teaspoons, one from her and one from my husband’s other sister-in-law, and she admitted that she didn’t want to give me the other set as she wanted me to think it was only her that was being thoughtful!  When I thanked her for them, I told her that if I had known that was the effect my not having teaspoons had on them I wished I had mentioned that I didn’t have enough jewelry either!

I have been here long enough now for my husband’s family to all be ‘trained’ to ask me if I want a coffee at odd times of the day, and, if we’re out visiting together they will often ask for a ‘boule’ for me, conjuring up images in my head of a massive bowl, but instead, I am given a mug, usually retrieved from the display cabinet and dusted off and washed first.

Home is where the heart is

One of my favourite streets in Algiers

Soon after we arrived in Algeria my husband started a business with one of his nephews and his friend and the van we had brought over was appropriated in this new venture.  This business was our only source of income for the first few years and kept us going until we had found our feet and settled down in the country.  Every time I saw the van I thought of my Mum and her kindness and thoughtfulness to us, and wished I could have painted ‘Sally’s van’ across the side!

In April 2004, 6 months after moving over, my husband planned to go back to England, and, at the very last minute (literally 24 hours before) decided I should go back with him.  I felt awful telling his sister that we were going as it meant that she would have to take care of our 11, 8 and 5 year olds while we brought the 3 year old with us.  I told her that I had no plan to go and that, in actual fact, I had planned to give the flat a good spring clean while my husband was gone.  She laughed and commented on how that’s what she and most Algerian women would be planning if their husbands were going away for a time.  I promised the children that I would wake them up in the morning even though we were leaving very early, but when I went into them the next morning and saw them all sound asleep I just couldn’t find it in my heart to wake them.  I kissed them and then left the flat to find my sister-in-law standing outside her flat.  I asked her to tell them that I was sorry for not waking them but that I had kissed them and that I loved them, by which time both she and I were sobbing on each other’s shoulders.  Of course…. her tears may have been at the thought of having to take care of them for 10 days!  But I don’t think so… she’s very soft-hearted mashAllah!

 My daughter came over for a break during the Spring holidays, and, if I had planned it to be THE most disastrous holiday ever, I could not have planned it better.  It rained for most of her stay, the electricity kept going off, she and a couple of her brothers contracted a stomach bug that confined them to bed for a few days, her sister then contracted chicken pox and the back windows were stolen from our brand new Kangoo car.  As a treat, towards the end of her stay, we brought her and her siblings to Khemis Milanna, a good hour’s journey from where we were living, to see friends who owned a Pizza restaurant. I admired the beautiful scenery as we drove down while my car sick daughter sat in the back and muttered something very non- complimentary about me sounding like Heidi.  When we arrived and finally sat down to eat, the pizza had a drizzling of olive oil over it which my daughter hates, and we ended up laughing at the catastrophe her holiday had become.  It was either laugh or cry.

On the last weekend I urged my daughter to start packing early and not leave it to the last minute, as I knew the family would all be around to see her before she left.  She burst into tears and said that she didn’t really want to go back to England.  You could have blown me down with a feather.  I had resigned myself to her going back to England and never wanting to come back, and was flabbergasted at her outburst.  She then explained that, when we talked about moving here, and then, after we had done so, she could not see us having the same family life that we had when we lived in England.  She remembered her holidays here and had loved it but couldn’t translate that to actually living here.  But the one thing that this holiday had shown her was…. we were still a family and still lived as a family exactly as we had in England, complete with all the chaos that involved.  Home really IS where the heart is, and it’s people who make a home, not bricks and mortar.  I told her that she didn’t need to go back if she didn’t want to, and, after thinking about it, she decided to go back for the last term to finish her ‘A’ levels.  It was so hard to see her off at the airport, but it meant that when she finally did move to Algeria a few months later, she came happily looking forward to her new life, without any doubts in her heart.

The idiosyncrasies of life in Algeria

The grounds of the Maillot hospital, Bab El Oued

The children all settled down to life in Algeria in time, each according to his or her personality and age.  We had to leave my eldest daughter in England to finish her studies in the English curriculum, and so I had an 11 year old son, 8 year old daughter, 5 year old son and a 2 year old son.  The two youngest were outside with the rest of the hoi polloi within a very short time of our arrival, and I remember looking out the kitchen window one day to see my 5 year old standing watching something with the arm of a newly acquired friend draped across his shoulders very nonchalantly.   This was something that really struck me immediately in Algeria… how very touchy feely the children were with each other.  It’s very common to see women, young and old, or young men and boys walking along arm in arm, or even holding hands, in the most innocent manner.  But for my 8 year old and 5 year old, sometimes this got to be too much when it came to the older generation.  It was rather overwhelming for them, having come from a quiet, nuclear unit, to having aunts, uncles, cousins and neighbours constantly bombarding them with hugs, kisses and questions.  They often retreated to the safety of our apartment to try and find some quiet time to recoup their equilibrium.  I remember once having to coax my 5 year old to come out from the bedroom in my mother-in-law’s home to meet my husband’s cousin, his wife and his son who was around the same age.  He eventually only came out as long as I promised to hold his hand, and that he could go back into the bedroom as soon as he had kissed the cousin and his wife.  He sat beside me for a little while, and before too long he was sitting in the corner with the other little boy giggling and playing away quite happily. A few months after our arrival our 8 year old daughter contracted chicken pox and had to stay indoors for some time until she had recovered.  The first day that she ventured out after her illness, I heard a lot of screaming and when I rushed to the window it was to find all her friends gathered around her in excitement and happiness to have her out playing again.

The children picked up the language very quickly especially as my husband had spoken to them  in derja from when they were born, and they had mixed with a lot of his friends who had also had spoken it with them.  One of my most amusing memories was from the days before my children had started school, lying in bed and listening to the neighbourhood children passing by the window on their way to school, singing ‘eenie, meanie, minee, mo,….’ with the ‘catch a tiger by the toe’ totally lost in their own made up mumbo jumbo!  So nice, I thought smugly to myself, to see my children having an influence on the local children instead of the other way round!

It took a while to become accustomed to the seasonal fruit and vegetables in the market, to the fact that the butcher sold only meat and not chicken (you had to go to a separate shop to buy chicken and eggs, and often couscous and richta also), and that the local shops sold some items, normally found in packets in the UK, individually e.g. you could buy a tray of 30 eggs or just one, or one sweet or 10, one roll of toilet paper or a pack of two or more, not to mention all the foods you couldn’t buy, important foods like Cadbury’s Chocolate for instance (!) and of course...... the money.  For me the local currency was, and in many ways still is, a total minefield.  My son and I went to buy a jar of instant coffee and I had to tell him to tell the shopkeeper that I just didn’t have enough money when he said that it cost 1,500 dinars, while silently screaming at the high price.  The shopkeeper then took out a 100 dinars note and 50 dinar coin and said this was the price.  Why couldn’t he have said that in the first place?  The French may well have left Algeria 40 years previously but they had left their legacy of the centimes in place so when a person quoted one price, he or she actually meant another….. for me it epitomized the Algerian society as a whole! 

I also discovered that my husband’s family didn’t always know where I could find some of the foods to which I was accustomed.  I was told that you couldn’t buy cheddar cheese, and, when I found it in a small supermarket not too far from my mother-in-law’s I realized that it was up to myself to look around and see what I could find.  To be honest, if someone in England asked me where they could find the proper couscous (not the pathetic imitation boil-in-a-bag that no self respecting Algerian woman would allow to cross the threshold of her home), I would not have been able to help them as I only cooked it rarely and when I did it was whatever I had brought back from Algeria with me.  So if they didn’t cook with or use it they would not necessarily know where to find it.  But you had to love these people who thought nothing of days and days of torrential rain, but just rolled up their trouser legs and walked in the pools of water in their flip-flops, and how could you not love them when you saw children walking to the shops in the morning in their pyjamas, and young men who thought nothing of popping out to the shops in their sister’s neon pink flip-flops. 

A street in Bab El Oued, Algiers

Change

Les Falaises, Jijel

What I remember most about those first few months is feeling cold all the time and the rain.  We had no heating at all in our flat until my mother-in-law took pity on us and gave us a heater, which was the type commonly used throughout the country – a gas fired heater with a large flue to the outside and a small window where you could see the flame.  There was already a niche in the wall in the hall for one so it was just a case of getting it installed.  The Algerians have this notion that a heater is not something suitable for a living room and so they plonk them in the one place where they are not needed and are the most inefficient – in the hallway just inside the front door.  This is the one area that is the warmest and yet is the furthest away from the living and sleeping areas, and if you have unexpected guests they may well be greeted with a few lines of damp washing drying in front of it, as soon as they enter your home.  We had no furniture other than our bed, chair-beds for the children, a few chairs and a computer desk, and we didn’t want to buy anything until we had our own home. 

We had arrived just before Ramadan and my long suffering sister-in-law and her daughter cooked for us for the whole month, after which we went out shopping for a fridge, cooker and washing machine.  We went to an area named Hamis, notorious for the sale of all kinds of electrical goods, which my husband told me had sprung up without any authorization and which had become so successful that the authorities could do nothing but leave it evolve.  However it extended its control by refusing to do anything useful like putting in pavements so it was a fun place to visit in the winter, if you liked looking like a mud-pie.  My first impression of the town was that it reminded me of a town in the Wild West straight out of a cowboy film.  There was a straight road and on either side a line of buildings of varying heights with shop signs advertising their wares.  My other sister-in-law came with us and I was fascinated by the fact that, while I was caked in mud from the hem right up to my eye-balls, she, without any apparent effort on her part, had hardly a spec on her, even her shoes looked clean!   She insisted on buying us the items we wanted and so, at last, I could start to take care of my own family again.

The thing about change is that it brings out qualities in you that you never knew you had, and some you could quite happily have lived to the end of your days without knowing.  I am an introvert, and, although I almost always enjoy myself on most social occasions, I don’t actually care if I don’t see or talk to people from one end of the month to the next.  Yes… I know… I’m odd.  And yet, I found myself wanting to get out and about and go visiting, and really looking forward to any excuse to get out of the flat, something that was totally alien to me.  Looking back I’m sure it was psychological – I still wasn’t driving in Algeria at this stage, and even if I could I didn’t know how to get anywhere, and I had nowhere to go because I hadn’t made any friends of my own. Our home was temporary so it didn’t really feel like home to me, and I think I felt confined.

Having my sister-in-law nearby meant that, whenever she had guests, they invariably popped in to see me too.  Both of our kitchen windows looked out over the building’s front steps and car park so we could see people coming and going, and whenever I saw someone coming to visit her I went into panic mode and raced around trying to make the flat semi-presentable.  I am not, by any means, a slob, but I never quite learned the knack of cleaning the whole flat every day just in case of such an eventuality… mainly because I just couldn’t be bothered.  I remember one day when I saw someone coming and did my usual headless chicken routine only to see them go off again without coming anywhere near my door.  I stood at my kitchen window, not with the relief you would expect, but instead, with hands on hips I wondered indignantly why they hadn’t come over to see me!  The human mind is an amazing, and, in my case, a contrary marvel.

 One of the very first things that my husband did was to get the phone line that was already installed, re-opened and then to get me an internet connection.  This was very rare in households, and cyber-cafes were very popular where you could go and sit at a terminal and pay for an hour’s internet access.  So it was a real luxury to have it in my home and we paid by the minute. But it was wonderful for me, and helped me to feel more connected with the rest of the world, and especially my family and friends. (This was long before Facebook I hasten to add)  I remember the first time I rang my Mum, she was so happy to hear from me and was so amazed at the fact that the line was so clear. 'I can't believe you're in Africa... you sound like you're in the next room!'  Before we had our own phone-line the only connection was through my sister-in-law, which made for some awkward phone calls between my husband's family and my own.  My sister told me of one ‘conversation’, using the word in its broadest sense, she had with my husband’s nephew where they both thought they could have a coherent conversation if she talked as loud as she could and he replied with ‘okay’ to everything she said.

Settling down to a new life and all the problems that go with it.

Adapting to life in Algeria was difficult for all of us in different ways.  We lived in a seaside town about 35kms from Algiers in a nice but rather conservative area. Six of us lived in a two-bedroomed flat with no furniture or furnishings and most of our things still in boxes. The water was turned off every few days without much of a routine so it was difficult to plan.  My sister-in-law and I agreed that we often felt it all depended on whether the man who was responsible for turning on and off the water for our area had a row with his wife or not!  The electricity supply was also fairly precarious with it going at the first drop of rain or clap of thunder.  Sometimes it didn’t come back for days.  Trying to figure out what to feed my family was another huge problem.  All the produce in the market seemed to consist of green vegetables and unless I started treating my family like cows I had to find what else there was available.  And that did not come to much where I lived so it meant going further a-field.  Also, after several times when the vegetables went off, I realised the reason why Algerian women go shopping every day, as opposed to once a week like I used to do in UK.  Produce free from pesticides and additives go off quicker than those that contain them!  And then there was the irritation I felt when my husband would come back from shopping saying that he could not find some vegetable because it wasn’t “in season”!  When, oh when do onions go out of season!!!!

I remember two different days in particular that epitomised the difficulties of my life during those first months in Algeria.  One was a Friday, both the water and the electricity had gone all morning, and I was exhausted from trying to prepare a dinner from scratch.  My husband came back from Jumuah prayer full of Iman having heard a lovely khutbah, feeling at peace and refreshed.  Just as I was about to collapse, the water and electricity came back, and because I did not know for how long the water was back, I had to wash the huge pile of clothes and clean the flat.  I remember crying and my husband asked me “Do you want to go back?”  I said, without any hesitation no, I just wanted it better than this.  The other time was one of the last nights of my daughter’s holiday from England.  It had been a disastrous holiday with everything that could possibly go wrong, doing so spectacularly.  I wanted to prepare her favourite chicken dish and we had no water or electricity.  I also had a whole chicken that I had to cut up with not a clue as to which end to start with!  I got out my trusty Delia Smith cook book for beginners (good old Delia Smith!) and looked at her diagrams, sitting on the floor of my kitchen (I had no counters to prepare it on), by candle light, and absolutely butchered this poor unsuspecting chicken, all the time thinking “what am I doing here?”

By far the most difficult thing, besides the fact that we had to leave Sarah, our daughter,  behind, was that I lost total control over my children.  From having them 24/7 and being solely responsible for their education and general well-being, I was relegated a back seat by virtue of the fact that I didn’t speak Arabic and hadn’t a clue what was going on unless someone kindly took pity on me and translated for me.  The day the children started school I cried.  And then when I saw what a fuss was made over whether their books were covered in a particular colour of plastic or not, or whether they had the copybooks with the right number of pages I cried again.  They played a lot outside and often went over to their aunts to eat and I never knew where they were, whom they were with, whether or what they had eaten.  It was very hot in the summer and all the children lost weight and I was really worried for their health.

The Craft Fair in Algiers

Algiers hosts a craft fair in the Exhibition Centre in La Foire, Le Pin Maritime  Bordj El Khifan), every year showcasing crafts from all over Algeria as well as from other countries around the world. 

My daughters and a friend and I went this week and had a lovely afternoon perusing beautiful goods from places as far flung as Taiwan, Indonesia, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Tonga, India, Pakistan and India, as well as from all corners of Algeria.

  

The goods ranged from mostly silver and beaded jewellery, to pictures in mosaic and in sand, to copper goods of all descriptions including one artist who specialises in creating copper trees, furniture including wood and rattan, woven clothes and carpets, and beautiful ceramic ornaments and lamps.

Some stalls were artists selling their wares and they were the most interesting.  One was a Tunisian woman selling very individual jewellery pieces which she makes herself, with each piece being a one-off.  Hers is the picture below.

I don’t think of myself as being artistic at all but I do admire the talent in other people and really enjoyed walking around and admiring all the goods.  It helped that it was a relatively small fair in comparison to the Book Fair held the previous week, and that it was quiet with not too many people in attendance so it was easy to see the goods on offer.

The first days of a new life in Algeria

Port of Algiers

Meanwhile Allah had not finished testing my husband and his determination to make Hijirah.  He stayed in Paris overnight with a friend and drove almost all the way down through France, and had almost reached Marseilles, when he looked for his briefcase with all his documents, passports, money, everything!  And he could not find it anywhere.  So he drove the van back up the motorway, like a maniac, bombarding Allah with dua and retracing his steps.  He rang his friend in Paris to check a service station just outside Paris where he had stopped.  They had found his bag with everything intact alhamdulilah!  So then he had to drive back down the motorway, again like a maniac to make the boat on time.  It was really important to make the boat as he had to have the paperwork for the van stamped and sent back to the dealer in Paris before a certain period expired – and the date was only days away.

He made the boat on time alhamdulilah, and when he arrived in Algeria, he did not arrive at his sisters until the evening.  So his nephew brought the van up to the flat that his sister had found for us and got all his friends to unload it for him.  The next morning my husband had a good look at the flat and decided it wasn’t good enough as it had damp patches and leaking pipes.  He asked his sister was there anywhere else for us, and she told him about the flat next door to her which was available, but said that it was only 2-bedroomed and not the 3-bedroomed one we had requested.  He looked at it and it was immaculate having been freshly painted and he took it.  So along came his nephew and his friends, loaded up the van again and then unloaded it.  Some of the friends swore that with all the boxes of books that they had had to carry, they were put off studying for life and never wanted to see another book as long as they lived!

If I had been told in England that I was going to be living right next door to my sister-in-law I would have been spitting fire!  But, subhanallah, it was the best thing that ever happened.  My sister-in-law is someone who very much keeps herself to herself and she was there if I needed her, but otherwise I was left up to my own devices.  She kept an eye on the children when they played outside and told them whom they should avoid mixing with, corrected any bad language they picked up and trained them and my husband into the pitfalls of living and socialising in Algeria.  She also was family and it was so good for my children to get to know her and her family.  There was also the advantage that when the family came to visit us, they came to her home and we went over there, so I did not have to “entertain” anyone.  It can’t have been very easy for her but she did it all with such good grace mashallah.  We always think of how our in-laws are going to impact on our lives but we don’t always give as much thought as to how our arrival impacts on them.  They do have lives of their own which they have happily lived before we come and then suddenly our arrival puts them in the spotlight, as everyone knows we are foreigners and that we “belong” to them!  May Allah reward her for her patience and support to us during those first difficult months.

We had paid the rent for the flat for a year so we had no problems about that alhamdulilah.  But we heard from England that the man who had put in an offer for the house had to back out as he had problems with insurance.  Meanwhile my husband was worried that the paperwork for the van did not arrive back to the seller in Paris, and that was all the money in the world that we had to live on!  The woman in the office in Paris was extremely helpful and went out of her way to help us, and alhamdulilah the paperwork went through successfully.

The Chamber of Commerce, Algiers