When someone walks into your house (they very rarely knock), the person entering says, Is-salaam alle-kum (may peace be upon you), the owner of the home is then required to at least say, Walle-kum is-salaam (and peace on you). It is polite for them to follow up with Bismillah (In the name of God), meaning: please come in, you are welcome. They will then serve either tea or zurig, but most commonly tea.
Tea: Mauritanians drink tea all the time, morning, lunch, dinner, night, and anytime they have a visitor (which is often!). The tea is a mint/green tea, and served in a small glass 1oz sized glass. Drinking tea though is not as easy or straightforward as you might think. The whole process can take literally hours as there are three rounds of tea. People will serve tea at home, in the office, along the road… it does not matter. Once you accept to take tea (as they almost always do), you are expected to stay for at least the first round, but some say that is bad luck. The first cup is usually quite bitter, which symbolizes death. The second cup is very sweet and symbolizes love. The final cup is a combination of the previous two, which is life. A Mauritanian would never not offer to make you tea, however you can tell how welcome you really are based on how much foam is in the glass. To make the foam they will pour the tea from one glass to another multiple times. It is really an art form where they don’t just pour the tea from one glass to another but you must lift up the one glass so that it falls a long distance into the other glass. The more you do this, the more foam you get. If you are very welcome, your host will have about 50% of the cup as foam. The reasoning behind this is that it takes more time to make more foam, and so they are showing you that they enjoy the pleasure of your company. Conversely, if your host gives you hardly any foam, you know that they’re only serving you tea as a hospitable moral obligation.
Zurig: A nice alternative to tea, and it doesn’t take much time. It is a good substitute when you’re looking for a cool drink at the end of the day. It is not as common as tea, but still quite common. It is a sugar-milk combination that is served cold and actually quite tasty.
Help: When someone asks for help, it is a religious and moral obligation to do your best to comply with their request. Some of my facilitators explained that even if someone does not ask for help, you just jump right in and help anyway. Even if you yourself are busy, or running late, many people will stop to help someone – especially if asked to. It is polite to decline help if someone does offer it. I ran into this when I was trying to do my laundry at my host family’s home. My little sister would just walk right up to me and start doing my laundry with me.
Staying at one’s home: This is really quite common. A friend can come into town unannounced and stay at their friend’s house pretty much indefinitely. My French facilitator explained that they could stay even a month or two, no problem! You’re just plain required to be hospitable to everyone!
This is a picture of my host parents in Rosso. Mom is making tea here, you may need to zoom in a bit, but the tea part is on the silver tray. There is a small tea pot along with various tea glasses.
Here is another volunteer making Zurig. Rather than mixing the drink with a spoon, you mix by pouring from one glass to another like this. The same technique is used for making the foam in the tea, remember that the more distance the drink falls from one glass to another, the better!
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