Hello from Wazuka! My name is Mariah, and I’m from California. I’m a part of the 2025 autumn batch of interns, and as the days wind down to our graduation, I thought it’d be nice to reflect on what led me to Obubu, my time here and how I’ll take this experience with me moving forward.
WEEDING
I’ve always been someone who sticks to the plan. One year goals, five year goals… I’ve always had a vision of what the major goalposts of my life would look like. As someone dead set on her career path from a young age, most of my life decisions have been made in service of becoming a professional writer, a dream I’ve lived for over three years. As I mentioned above, writing is almost foundational to who I am, and I have always wanted to create stories to be shared with the world. So what’s a small tea town in Wazuka have to do with all this?
My tea journey blossomed at around the same time as my career. We were a year into the pandemic and working from home required a level of individual accountability, not just in regard to completing assignments but also in terms of taking breaks. Part of my break time rituals was preparing tea for myself. A few cups of oolong, a bowl of matcha or black tea with milk and sugar, it allowed me to create natural breaks in my day and return to the writer’s room refreshed. As the world started to open up again, I had my first trip to Japan, which deepened my love for tea even more. I also began making curated specialty tea drinks once a week for my friends, who loved sugary boba drinks but hadn’t experienced a wider breadth of tea. Building custom drinks for them was my way of sharing my passion for tea, an interest that ballooning into something more than just a hobby, and a few years later I started my own pop up cart, Mariah Makes, where I have a rotating menu and a goal of converting non tea drinkers into tea drinkers.
As AI, series budget cuts, and studio consolidation threatens my profession, I have come to appreciate spaces that push me to lean into my creativity, share our stories and work towards a common goal, which is what made interning at Obubu such an enticing prospect.
HARVESTING
While some days blur together, I have so many special memories to count… probably too many to count. Here are some of them:
PROCESSING
While working at Obubu, we made it a point to tell guests that “tea is freedom”. There are no right or wrong answers, only experimentation, trial and error until you reach your perfect cup. This trial and error philosophy feels uniquely applicable to my life right now. As for the first time in a long time, I have been drawn to do something other than write. And while I don’t have my next few years completely mapped out, I know that I will continue to find the intersections between writing and tea production because for me, tea is even more than just freedom. It’s a form of storytelling, not unlike writing, with the ability to unite and build communities over a shared cup.
The people I’ve met, the relationships I’ve built and the knowledge I’ve gained has been invaluable. Over the course of three months, I have deepened my appreciation for all the small teams with big things to say, desperate to share their passion and story with the world. After countless tea tours, rows and rows of tea bushes trimmed and harvested, one too many inside jokes, lots of laughs over shared meals, and somehow still not enough board game nights, I can easily say that Obubu has become an integral part of my story, and I can’t wait to keep sharing. So as I say goodbye to my Obubu family, I know it’s not a true farewell. Mata ne!