Tereré 101

Tereré: one of my favorite staples of the Paraguayan culture.  In fact, I'm drinking tereré as I write this post.  Our family has been enjoying tereré since our first day in Paraguay.  We had tried to make it using a coffee filter before we arrived to the country but that was more like a disaster than actual tereré.  Here's an early picture of Sarah and I drinking tereré after the birth of Silas: no better way to recover from labor!

Just to get it out of the way: tereré is not a drug.  It is a green tea that is shared in social settings and drank ice cold.  For example, it's the perfect thing when visiting with friends and relaxing under the mango tree on a hot day in Paraguay... which is almost every day.

To help you better appreciate tereré let me teach you how it works and some of the etiquette.  Consider this Tereré 101.  If you ever come to Paraguay you'll be glad you learned this.  A tereré 'equipo' or kit contains three parts: a thermos containing ice water, the cup known as a 'guampa' and the metal straw known as a 'bombilla'.  The bombilla has a filter on the end of it.  Since the yerba mate (tea leaves) are loose in the guampa when water is poured over top of it, in the guampa, the tea instantly steeps and the bombilla serves as the filter.  See?

If you're still with me, let's move on to tereré etiquette.  This social drink is shared between friends in groups as small as two or as large as eight.  Really there's no limit to how many people can share tereré but since it's shared in turns if there are more than eight people in a group a second equipo of tereré would probably be introduced for practical reasons.  Chairs are inevitably circled up in a shady spot such as on a front porch or under a tree.  

One person, typically the youngest, serves himself and everyone else; so it's ideal if everyone is in reaching distance.  The server will serve everyone in order, first filling the guampa, then handing it to a person in the circle.  That person drinks the tereré until it is empty and makes a slurping sound.  That's the servers cue to take the guampa back, refill it and offer it the next person in the circle.  When you don't want to be served anymore you need to say, 'Gracias' when returning the empty guampa.  This communicates to the server, 'Thanks, I've had enough' and if he isn't too distracted should skip you each time the tereré goes around the circle thereafter.

Now that I've taught you all the proper tereré etiquette check out this funny commercial for my favorite Yerba Mate brand: Campesino.  The video is explaining in Spanish what I just told you about how tereré is properly shared.  What it's showing are all the ways these rules are typically broken: pretty hilarious!

I don't only love tereré because it's refreshing. It facilitates what I love most about Paraguayan culture: relationships!  Tereré is the centerpiece around which life is shared whether it be with guests, friends or family.  When we returned to our home country it made us laugh but also made us a little sad to find we had taken our one last social drink: coffee and individualized it with the Keurig machine!  Extremely convenient, yet another thing in our American culture making it possible for us to fill our schedules with more accomplishments and freeing us from having to slow down and share life with those around us.

That is what tereré is all about: real life, non-rushed, shared experiences.  Paraguay is one of the few countries that still values this above other things like productivity.  I think that is why, whether you're in the city or the countryside, tereré is so popular here and I hope it stays that way!