I thought this would be a good time to post about one of the more striking cultural habits of the Argentine people (and other South Americans as well, of course). Last weekend was my birthday, and so on Friday night, a bunch of my friends here took me out to dinner in San Telmo. Dinner was fantastic, but this post is about the tradition surrounding one of my gifts - my very own mate.
Based on my mother's reaction when I told her that my friends bought me a mate for my birthday, it's probably worth mentioning that you have to pronounce the word the Spanish way, with two separate syllables (thus, "mah-tay"). Mate is one of the things most typical of Argentina - mate is a drink similar to tea, and a mate is also the unique sort of cup that you drink it out of. It was the cup that was given to me as the gift.
The mate cups can be made out of various materials - wood, clay, metal..I've even seen some out of glass. But the most typical (and most Argentines would tell you the best) mates are made from calabasa, or gourds. The gourds are hollowed out and dried, and the outside is usually decorated in some way. The drink itself, like I said, is similar to tea, but without any sort of bag. It's made from filtering hot water through dried yerba leaves. You prepare it (this is the abbreviated/basic version - there are a thousand ways that people prepare their mate based on personal taste) by almost filling your mate cup with the dried yerba, inserting and burying the end of a straw (bombilla), filling the gourd with hot water, and drinking. The bombilla is specially made - it's closed on one end and works in one of various ways to strain the water so that you're not drinking the leaves.
As a tea drinker to begin with, I guess I was kind of naturally inclined to like the mate, but the most appealing thing about the drink is the social custom that it represents. It would seem as though the drink is as often shared as it is drank solo. Long conversations crop up around drinking a full thermos' worth of mate, and and there are enough social and courtesy rules to go along with the sharing of the mate to fill a book, it seems. Basically, it provides an excuse to relax and hang out with people, which of course I love. And now that I have my own (thank you Lennart, Peter, and Cami) it's something that I can bring home with me :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment