The Coffee Alternative
I found out about Yerba Mate in France, Lyon as a university student in the mid 80's. A good friend at the time, Xavier Ahumada introduced me to it, along with other cultural aspect of "La Pampa" environment and its socio-political context of the "Latifundismo". He drank from his personal bombilla, that you can now find inauthentic and cheaply made on Amazon. Anyways, for me it was very similar to the afternoon tea back in Mali where I was as a kid.
The ceremonious making and drinking of natural herbal stimulant seem to be common to diverse traditions. In Arab and many Northern African countries green tea (gunpowder) is drunk daily in the afternoon by adult males, as part of socializing much like American may get together and drink beer which would be a possibility in those Muslims nations. In South America is the yerba mate, and in Asia is tea. Coffee has been the choice for modern settings in Europe, the US, and around the world.
In the US the coffee is considered low quality, or too watery by Europeans and others who only need a spoonful of their instantaneous coffee type mixed into their breakfast cup of milk to keep them going for the whole day. For them, it is hard to understand why Americans need to drink more than one cup to several cups of coffee in the course of just one day. I lived in Ethiopia where coffee was first discovered as a preteen and they didn't drink "boona" (the appellation in Amharic) all day either, just a tiny cup of the strong, intensely aromatic and concentrated black liquid is sipped in the morning.
Use the links below for some information on yerba mate:
should-you-swap-your-coffee-yerba-mate
