By Laurie King

I learned to drink yerba mate (pronounced "mahtay") in the Argentine Rainforest. We were living in Aguas Claras, which I guess you'd have to describe as a commune. Anyway, it was a group of people who all lived and ate together, and were committed to developing a kind of community that derived its strength from diversity, and there were a lot of happy kids running around. I was there learning about medicinal herbs in the rainforest, and picking up a little Spanish in the process.

Our teacher, Amanda, had grown up in Columbia, and had earned her Ph.D. in botany in New York. She arranged for some accomplished South American herbalists to talk to us about their work. One, Carlos, had travelled quite some distance to see us, and was introduced with great affection. He was apparently very well respected in Buenos Aires, where he and his wife Ingrid had a small museum of herbology. After an enjoyable amount of fanfare, Jorge announced that, although Carlos was a great herbalist, his abilities in that arena were nothing compared with his mastery of the mate ceremony. We were in for a show.

It was Bill, Marie, and me. Well, a few of the others tried it, but we three were the only ones to make it past the initially bitter taste, and on into the heart of the mate.

We never felt high -- no more than you would from drinking a cup of coffee, or even tea. So I guess it was the ceremony that transported us, although honestly, none of us is susceptible to that sort of thing. (We're all unabashed cynics, which is one reason we had so much fun together that summer.) I later learned that the active ingredient in mate has the same biological basis (methyl xanthine) as the active ingredients in coffee and tea. But in addition to being a stimulant, mate also contains phosphorous, iron, calcium, and vitamins C, B1 and B2, and is said to stimulate the muscles, heart, lungs, and immune system.

Anyway, here's how you do it. The person who prepares the mate, usually the host, is called the cebador. I thought it was probably from the same root word as our "server" -- they sound the same. Jorge, whose English is good, thought so, too. But Bill looked it up in one of the huge English/Spanish reference tomes he happened to be travelling with, and insisted it had something to do with shepherds and lambs.

So. The cebador fills the mate (hollow gourd) about two-thirds full with mate (yerba mate -- the dried herb) and digs the bombilla (a hollow silver straw with a strainer on one end to filter out bits of the leaf) down deep into the herb. Then he pours in hot water, slowly. There's a real art to this. It's best if the water is very, very, hot, but you don't want to have boiled the oxygen out of it, or the mate will taste flat. If little bubbles of green foam appear, you've done it right.

Out of courtesy, the cebador always drinks first, because the first bowlful is very strong and hot and bitter. Sometimes he even spits out the first mouthful. After he has drunk it all, he fills the gourd with hot water again, and passes it to the next person . . . who drinks it all and returns the mate (vessel) to the cebador, to be refilled for the next person. There are a lot of subtleties, but that's the main idea. If someone holds onto the gourd for too long, talking, telling a story, forgetting that others are waiting for their turns, he might be teased with something that translates, "Say, do you think that is a microphone you are holding?"

I watched carefully, and several days later, when I had an opportunity to be cebador, prepared the mate and poured the water just the way I remembered seeing Carlos do it. I poured very slowly, and let the water run down the bombilla, instead of pouring directly into the mate. I got lots of green foam, time after time, and the Argentines made a pleasant fuss over a gringa pouring mate so well.

Hooked? By this time, Bill and Marie and I were hooked. We insisted on taking a mate break every afternoon. After all, mate was the official national drink of Argentina; it was only right that we partake regularly. A tourist book I read said that the gauchos were so addicted to mate that they would rather trade for it than for food. But to us it just seemed like an excuse to take a break in the hot, humid rainforest afternoons, and an intimate ceremony of fellowship; that was what we liked so much about it.

Every morning, Amanda or Carlos or Jorge would take us walking in the forest, pointing out sombrero del toro (used for treating alcoholism), jarilla, and many other South American medicinal herbs. Some days we harvested incajuju (which the ancient Incas walked for months every year to harvest from this place), or gathered mistol berries for cough syrup. Every afternoon we shared mate in the shade of a huge carob tree, and in that way we passed many enjoyable days in Aguas Claras.