Note 87 — Little Dictionary of Creole Proverbs.

Or better still: “I don’t intend to drink tea just because he has the fever.” In other words, “I don’t intend to bother myself with other people’s troubles.”....The tea referred to is one of those old Creole preparations taken during fevers—the tisanes of the black nurses: perhaps the cooling sassafras, or orange-leaf tea administered to sufferers from dengue in New Orleans.