Lessons from Mate

As we pick our way along the coastline, shoes squelching in the swampy reeds, the mate is passed from person to person with seamless adherence to tradition. The server holds the thermos and pours a steaming trickle of water over the small tea leaves firmly packed into the mate, or gourd. When it is my turn to drink, I wrap my hands around the warm mate, feeling the delicate tickle of the leather stitching around the gourd. Sipping cautiously from the straw-like bombilla, the potent bitterness of the tea thrills my senses. Much to the Uruguayans’ surprise and delight, I praise the exotic flavor and pass the mate back to the server, who promptly begins the ritual of pushing the yerba leaves into a neat, compressed mound to make room for the water.

The entire summer in Uruguay with Amigos de las Américas played out like a grand mate ritual: sharing, serving, and trying a myriad of new flavors. Work in La Colorada, a tiny town perched on the scenic coast of Uruguay, depended on collaboration with the youth of the community. Before we arrived, the youth laid out several projects they wanted to complete, including functional and aesthetic improvement of the local soccer field, swing-sets, and bus stops. My partner and I cannot say that we completed these projects—that honor belongs to the community—but we did catalyze the completion. For example, when we painted over the graffiti scribbles on the bus stops, so many teenagers showed up to help that we did not have enough paintbrushes for everyone. After painting a vibrant base coat, we accented the bus stop with our handprints, an explicit symbol of the collaborative effort.

We shared more than paintbrushes with community members. Cooped inside on gray, rainy afternoons, we swapped card games, learning chancho in exchange for teaching Go Fish. With the teenagers, we avidly compared cultures, discussing dating customs, job opportunities, and family life in Uruguay and the U.S. We struck upon shocking similarities, from a mutual interest in Green Day to an abiding love of hot cocoa, which caused that distant corner of the world to radiate a tender coziness I associate with home. Food was one of the best ways to exchange cultures, especially since cultures have many idiosyncrasies when it comes to nourishing the body. One evening the teens taught us how to make tortas fritas, or fry bread, which we then smothered in dulce de leche, a variety of caramel that is ubiquitous in Uruguay. In turn, we prepared a batch of brownies, which the teens eagerly sampled and approved.

Through this constant cultural exchange, I came to consider the teens as true friends and my host family as a genuine second family. Snapping sticks into the fireplace, my host mother told us humorous anecdotes from her year in Italy as a nanny, as well as tragic stories that cast seemingly implacable shadows over her amber eyes. We listened quietly to the gentle flow of her Spanish and to the empathetic crackle and sigh of the fire. The relationships that we forged with community members enabled our volunteer work to be more effective and meaningful.

In training for our AMIGOS experience, we read a provocative article criticizing the intentions of U.S. volunteers in Latin America. The article accused volunteers of inadvertently imposing their economic, social, and cultural value systems on Latin American people and of being powerless to instigate any kind of significant change outside the U.S. As a volunteer embarking for 5 weeks of community service in a Latin American country, I was determined not to commit the same mistake of insensitive volunteerism that had fueled the arguments behind the article. I realized that I was not traveling thousands of miles to clutch to my value systems as if they were a shield against the unknown; I was traveling to rediscover the common ground of humanity, which has been stained crimson by war and intolerance. I wanted to reach out to a community, no matter how small, and remind them not to sleepwalk through the day, feeling powerless to change or understand the disparities in life. I also wanted them to know, as Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano once wrote, “Tengo mucho que aprender de la gente”—“I have a lot to learn from the people.”

While you enjoy reading about Anna’s experiences in Uruguay last summer, sip some organic yerba mate!  Honor this wonderful cultural experience today.  Click here to purchase your very own organic yerba mate, bombilla, and gourd.