Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
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N.Y.-based Wildlife Conservation Society, has spent more than a decade working to help communities safeguard threatened ecosystems and species in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other places with a high degree of ambient tension. One such project required him and his team to navigate Pakistan's Karakoram Highway. "It's carved into the face of the cliffs, with blind corners every 100 yards or so, and a sheer drop to the valley hundreds of feet below," Zahler says. "It's barely wide enough for one vehicle, but you encounter opposing traffic at nearly every bend. You honk before the corners to avoid a head-on collision, but they happen, and the road is smeared with gravel or flour or whatever the truck was carrying before it went over the side." Now add a snow leopard being transported from Pakistan to the Bronx Zoo, a landslide with boulders pelting the truck, mix in some earthquakes and washouts that take huge bites out of the already-too-narrow road, make it last for 17 hours, and you have a day in Zahler's life. "The act of taking tea has always been a sanctuary," he says. "I'm usually bouncing around in a Jeep, really getting beaten up, often in some fairly frightening landscapes, so just stopping and getting out is such a welcome respite—and it's always built around tea." That tea might be just a handful of dust tossed into a pot with some powdered milk and sugar, as in Pakistan. Or it might be green tea, as in Afghanistan. Or it might be a mare's milk concoc- tion, as in Mongolia. In a sense, Zahler says, the actual tea is sec- ondary to the act of sharing a moment with the host: "This region is famed for its hospitality, and tea is a huge part of that." Sometimes that simple act of taking tea can have big conse- quences. As a researcher, Zahler once ventured into Pakistan's outer tribal lands to conduct wildlife research. He was welcomed into the stone huts of inhabitants who literally gave him their last chicken, along with lots of tea. In the absence of translators, tea built trust. Zahler witnessed the deforestation of surrounding valleys by foreign conglomerates, and he vowed to protect them. He returned as a conservationist and helped to initiate commu- nity-based projects to safeguard the dwindling forest ecosystems people rely on for survival. In conversations with tribal elders facilitated by translators and much tea, bylaws were established to prohibit logging and the hunting of endangered species in 46 valleys. The model has since been scaled up and replicated for use in Afghanistan. "When you are invited into a home in Pakistan for tea, it is a significant sign of welcome," Zahler says. "And also a sign of acceptance." BEYOND WORDS What other human invention communicates so much without words? Music, perhaps? Painting? Dance? Like all these glories of the spirit, the taking of tea makes a claim on our time, and it repays us with insight, energy and trust. In times of war, in times of duress, those simple attributes are what push us for- ward. As a wise mother once said: Everything looks better after a cup of tea. FRESH CUP MAGAZINE !%