As I sit here in my home office teaching English to Koreans and others online and via Skype, I usually have a big cup of coffee beside me or my guampa of yerba mate from either Paraguay or Argentina. I am a big fan of the South American tea.
I started sipping mate when I was a student in the anthropology program at the University of West Florida many years ago. A visiting student from Paraguay introduced me to the traditional way of consuming yerba mate. It is a health tea with over 20 vitamins and has its original use a long time ago among the Guarani Indians of Parguay and Argentina.
After I finished my university work, I went to Paraguay and found that on street corners, in the parks, plazas, offices, schools, everywhere people were sipping mate, using the traditional guampa, and metal straw called the bombilla. The guampa is often made of carved wood, metal, or cow horn. There are many beautiful guampas of different sizes, styles and shapes. I have a collection of them. If you google "mate," or "yerba mate" you can find beautiful guampas and decorative bombillas. Mate is the national drink of the two mentioned countries. To truly understand their cultures, it is mportant to understand the tradition of mate.
Mate is traditionally consumed socially and the guampa and bombilla are shared. The drink is passed around to each person of the group, sitting in a circle or semi circle. Nowadays, people drink mate alone, and because of concerns of cleanliness and hygiene today, but the tradition still lives on, and it is easy to see groups drinking mate together whereever groups can congregate.
So, as I am teaching English, I do like to sip on the old guarani traditional beverage: mate.
No comments:
Post a Comment