It was on a winter July afternoon when I joined my mother and her mother, my grandmother, on a 10-minute drive to Mheelo Ward to hand-pick some fresh green leaves of mosukutswane herbal tea. Quite often, over the phone, my mother is always ululating on how she, together with my grandmother and Kanye, have planted various herbal teas and makatane (cooking melon) in my sister’s home yard at Mheelo.
I have fond memories of the teenager me making rooibos tea at home then flavouring it with kgomodimetsing, sometimes longana and other days mosukutswane. However, it was very strange to see my parents sometimes drinking the picked up teas without the bought, yellow, red and green packaged ’’No. 1 Rooibos Tea’’. They always claimed that drinking the free and unpacked teas relaxes them, lowers blood pressure and it even cleanse the system?
“How can they enjoy that? There is no milk in it! Not even sugar!” I have always questioned and doubted their intelligence.
Going back to the chilly day at Mheelo, I had told them, the previous evening, of my strong intentions to take with me some of the free teas to London. I had also reiterated how much it actually cost me to buy herbal teas such as mosukutswane across the pond. Although I should point out that I drank only a couple of cups of this delicate yet with a pleasant mint flavour drink when I was writing up my dissertation. Now, 6 months later, you’d think I paid a fortune for it… I’m running low, time to go for more!
#herbaltea
#Botswana
#biodiversity
#homegrown
#medicinalplant
Blessing Kgosi e tsile Kgasa 