Patagonia, Coffee, Tea,
Maté
An Exchange Student's Escape ~ By Abby
Consadine
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At first it
was just a name, then a point on the map. Trelew, Chubut. From the only
picture I could find, it was a little gazebo surrounded by bright greens.
Then it was nearer once I got to Buenos Aires, but still a name. Trelew.
I liked how it playfully bounced off my tongue. Treleeeeew. Trelewwww.
Trrrrelew. Trelew in El Sur, in Patagonia. Patagonia. Patagonia. But regardless
of how much I rolled the name, my imagination would not, could not conjure
up any picture. The flight was two hours from the capital and looking out
the window above the province, I realized that God couldn’t either. It
looked like He had run out of glaze, so that when the earth was kilned
there was still this one spot that remained raw, rough, and barren next
to a sea of infinite and steely grayness. The sun started to sink down,
making everything below into one monotonous shadow. It was going to swallow
us up, I thought excitedly with a sort of happy fatalism.
“So, what do you see?” asked the
Australian student seated next to me. “We should almost be there now.”
Slowly, I pulled down the plastic
shade and leaned back into the seat. “Nothing. There’s nothing there.”
I lived there for a year. I returned.
I’ve been back for about a year now. For one full year, I’ve been chewing
over the constantly evasive, “meaning of my experience.” What did I learn
there? My conclusion is a cliché one, but it serves well for the
purposes of elaboration: Patagonia is not just a place, but a state of
mind; one that tells you to slow down. One that tells your muscles to relax.
One that tells you to breathe not because you’ll die if you don’t, but
because the air is nice.
The Patagonian state of mind is a
reflective state of mind. I remember Patagonia best when I am reflective.
The moments I remember best are when I was being reflective, when I completely
withdrew myself from my cutthroat competitive high school life filled with
frustrated hours of formulas, functions, reports, TI-83’s, and a breakneck
rat race rush towards the future where college was already in a student’s
sights, future grad school, the future spouse, the future job, the future
children, that future completion of the American Dream, white picket fence
and all.
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| On the
pampas of Argentina you will find the eucalyptus tree, the lombardy pine
that breaks the wind and the ombú tree. The ombú is
the only tree indigenous to the pampas and as the pampas is to topography,
the ombú is to trees. A hudge trunk, large extended branches,
and knotted and strangled roots. The tree does not burn and no wind or
storm has ever leveled an ombú, nor drought or fire has destroyed
one. The ombú cannot be cut by ordinary methods and it has
always been a resting place for those passing through this bleak landscape. |
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Location was half the reason the
feeling of escape was so easy to accept. I was in the middle of a desert.
A river ran through it. And around that river flourished a lush valley.
Think Shangri-La. And in that valley was a string of former Welsh settlement
city-towns, one of which was Trelew. The ambiguous idea of ‘culture’ was
one that wasn’t at all obvious. I knew I had to be patient. In the mean
time, I figured, why not have fun? This culture thing was bound to turn
up somehow.
I had my share of sightseeing. This
brought an endless stream of contradicting clashes that seemed to test
the way I had viewed the world. The sea was right next to the desert. My
host family took me to Punto Tombo, a nesting ground for penguins whose
territory was open to wandering visitors provided they follow the strictly
imposed rule of no touching. I thought I had seen everything when we had
to stop the car on the desert road we were on so to give a waddling penguin
opportunity to cross. Adding on, we were in the dead of summer. I mean,
where was I? It was like, “Welcome to Sea Mammal Club Med.”
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Gauchos
on the Argentine Pampas
| "The gaucho's
possessions were as spare as his physique. They included the horses that
were for him the basis of everything, his disshevelled clothing, his knife
or other weapons, his poncho, his boleadores (the balls linked by
leather cord, used as a kind of lariat to bring down animals) and a few
pots and utensils as if he was married. His habitation was a filthy hovel
of mud and thatch, furnished with an ox skull or two for seating. His diet
was beef and little else, since even bread did not reach the pampas for
a long time to come. His habits and tastes were chaotic and violent. He
respected physical skill and courage; he detested learning, weakness, restraint,
rules, work, settled society, and order in general, as well as almost everything
else that was not associated with life on horseback." |
Robert
Crassweller
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The day after, we went
to Gaiman where my first experience in traditional Welsh afternoon tea
was not in Wales, but a small town in Argentina that doesn’t even show
up on a normal map. It may not have much, but few can deny that Gaiman’s
tea houses are top notch. We received the royal treatment: fine china,
knit doilies, and a dizzying array of homemade cakes, breads, and jams
that would make any dieter cry in frustration. Speaking of royalty, I discovered
that Princess Diana had visited Gaiman herself. I’m not lying. In one of
the tea houses, the patrons had her picture on the wall, along with her
lipstick-stained teacup and cloth napkin- both of which were locked in
a glass display case. The Welsh also make their culture known through an
annual festival called Eisteddfod that celebrated the crowning of the bard-
in this case, the winner of a locally prestigious literary and music competition-
through various Druid ceremonies accompanied by international and national
perf
ormers of dance, music, and poetry.
Before then, I had never seen a druid before. My perceptions of history
have told me that they died out long ago. I know I sounded infantile, but
the question came out before I had a chance to check myself. “Is that a
real druid?”
Another time we took ATVs to the
beach where we found sea elephants and seals sunbathing. It was honestly
better than a zoo because you saw everything up close. Sunbathe with the
rest of them if you like. No rules this time, just your own sense of self-preservation
that kept you from getting too close. Speaking of no rules...
Nightclubs. 18 to enter. 21 to drink,
regardless of what age you are. And the names were catchy, as nightclub
names usually are. Brujas. Morena. Akropolis. Dimension Zero. El Zodiaco.
Apocalipsis. They were hubs of teenage pop culture; as religiously frequented
on Fridays and Saturdays as church was on Sundays. Here was my first taste
of parental liberalism. I ask about curfews, ready for something strict,
but not necessarily unreasonable. My host father’s answer: “Go on! Have
fun. Seven. Eight. Whatever. Maybe a drink. Just don’t get drunk.”
One’s first experience would prove
to be chaotic, but the schedule would soon settle into the mind as something
nearly ritualistic. Meet at the friend’s house at midnight. If you had
good contacts, you had a free pass. Get ready. Make up. High heels. Tight
jeans. Short skirts. Jewelry. Jean jacket. The works. Drink coffee to make
sure you actually make it through the night. At one, take a taxi to Establo,
the popular alley bar. At three, migrate to Morenas- which by local law
shouldn’t be in the downtown area even though it is. Stay until you feel
like leaving. I usually leave before six or seven when they start playing
uncharacteristic American music from the fifties as a subtle “get out”
to anybody still there. Go to a cafe. Drink tea or hot chocolate. Take
the taxi back home. Sleep till noon.
I wrote about it afterwards, the
sensation still fresh in my memory: This universe was Argentine teen pop
culture in all its forms, pure and unrestrained. People swerved around
each other, holding their drinks high so as not to spill them, the neon
glowing cups garishly standing out from the machine generated mist. |
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Around me was a faint dimness pierced
by the rapidly changing disco lights as I neared pulsing dance floor where
I could literally feel the Cumbia beat getting into my bones. Close to
the walls, school cliques kept to their respective groups- smoking, drinking,
laughing, and shouting over the ever prevalent music. Over my light Primavera,
I see one bunch of girls wearing the same style orange and blue jacket,
a mark of the 5th year students from my school. The sight reminded me of
Grease’s Pink Ladies.
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| Now About This Culture
Thing
Stripping down to the bare basics
of everything, the concept of culture reduces itself to people and habit.
Every other Sunday, I would wake up to the smell of an asado being prepared
downstairs on the patio grill. It’s times like these when I simply skip
breakfast altogether. Argentines are proud of their meat and methods of
barbequing it. “On the grill, not on the fire.” My host dad told me as
he rotated the sizzling shish kabobs. “You put out the fire and the heated
metal is enough to cook the meat. Not like you Estadounidenses (Literally
translated into “United Statetians” because Argentines are “Americans”
too when you think about it) who roast on coals and make the meat black
outside and undercooked inside.” I tell him its an acquired taste.
The pace of life is slow, but deliciously
so. Siestas and weekend asados. A short walk to Mares ice cream shop. Picnics
beside the Chubut river or a sunny day trip to touristy Puerto Madryn and
its seaside and sidewalk cafes. Tea time in a Gaiman teahouse or going
to the beach at Rawson. It always has something to do with people. People
congregating. People talking lazily about the days events. People talking
heatedly about politics. And at the center of everything would be a single
cup of maté, the national Argentine tea pronounced “máh-teh.”
They’re as proud of their tea as they are of their asados.
The process is as methodical as a
Japanese tea ceremony. Everyone takes it in one cup-usually quite ornate-
in which the server puts in a liberal amount of loose tea leaves, sticks
in a metal straw with a filter at the end, then pours in hot water from
a not very ornate kettle. The server takes it first, sipping the strong
brew through the straw. When finished, the cup is replenished with a fresh
supply of hot water. The metal straw is wiped clean and is then passed
to the person on the right. This drink and refill method is, of course,
accompanied by copious amounts of conversation that always seem to last
longer than the tea itself. Each person has his or her different methods
of preparation and ways of taking the tea. At home, my classmates and I
drank tea and coffee alone to wake ourselves up. In Argentina we drank
tea to socialize and enjoy ourselves. These are the moments I remember
best because they were “living in the moment” moments. |
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A Welshman
in Patagonia in the mid 19th century
| "If God
made earth, the devil made Patagonia and he made it as his own special
home as two pies." |
Glyn
Williams
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At the end of our year, my Australian
friend and I joked about how everything significant in our experience happened
over some type of drink. I went a step further and declared maté
to be a philosophy in its own right. After all, it is a pillar in socio-cultural
interaction. Readying myself to return to the States, logic concluded that
it was impossible to take an entire culture with me. But a philosophy,
yes. A philosophy is easy to carry and requires no extra fees for added
weight. Maté is a way of dealing with friends and strangers; as
warming as a greeting kiss on the cheek.
In a moment of clarity wherein I
was contemplating why I had not been sent to Japan (my first choice on
the exchange student application; Argentina was #2), I realized that there
was an exact phonetic similarity between maté and the Japanese word
for ‘wait‘, “Matte, matte!” The Argentine maté also said “wait,”
but in its own way.
Wait. Come in and talk a while.
Wait. It’s been a long time, hasn’t
it?
Wait. So what have you been doing
lately?
Wait. Hello, it’s nice to meet you.
Question: What did you learn there?
Answer: I learned how to make tea.
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