La Vida Idealist

One of the best ways I’ve found to bond with Argentinians is over a helping of mate. Mate is the local tea that, it is said, just about all Argentinians drink, though after spending enough time here, you quickly learn that the idea of drinking it all day is more of a myth. Some don’t even drink it at all. This drink, which has equivalent effects to coffee, can make you very jumpy and twitchy if you drink too much too fast, which I’ve done.

Photo by lrargerich

I wanted to get into the mate culture, if for nothing else than to learn about and be a part of something new. It is hard at first though—you have to gather all of the equipment together (mate gourd, yerba tea, bombilla straw, thermos) and learn how to drink it appropriately. There’s even a set of unwritten rules that accompanies this culture.

But aside from the ways of mate, what’s most interesting is how it brings people together. Friends will sit in parks and kill time talking while passing around the mate. I had wanted to be a part for awhile but really didn’t know enough people to join, and drinking alone in the park seemed so very sad to me. I thought, it’s unlikely that you’ll pick up friends drinking mate alone.

Then, this past New Years’ Eve, I went down to Mar del Plata with a co-worker and her friends, and throughout the entire trip we were on a kind of mate bender (I’m just glad it was tea rather than cigarettes or some other highly addictive drug.) I discovered that when the mate is passed around, any and all discussion topics are open. There’s joking but there’s serious conversation as well.

This is where the real cultural sharing comes in, because driving through the pampas, these wide open fields conjured up my image of the Midwestern United States. The mate was passed around, and suddenly I started teaching some English words, and watched them practice and try to wrap their mouths around words that I never realized were difficult to pronounce. I was sipping the metal straw and trying not to burn my tongue as they tried not to roll their r’s. There was laughing, it was relaxed, and I was just one of the guys, even if for just a few minutes. Then I passed the mate back, and we went around again.