Ka´a: the life-blood of Paraguay

Also known as yerba or Ilix paraguayensis, ka´a is consumed regularly across the Southern Cone. While the whole region drinks yerba mate, a hot tea made of yerba leaves, drinking terere is unique to Paraguay.

Drinking terere or yerba mate requires a whole ¨team¨ of equipment. Guampas are the traditional cups used to serve yerba and are still often made of cow horns. You use a filtering metal straw called a bombilla to drink (something that I haven´t mastered with the boiling hot yerba mate without burning my tongue). Also necessary is a thermous or thermo. It is necessary to have seperate ones for mate and terere (I´m not sure why) and the terere ones are often pimped out with leather.

If you ask a Paraguayan about the advantages of ka´a you´ll get a laundry list of responses (of varying accuracy) including that it´s a diruetic, reduces obesity, decreases cholesterol, increses muscular endurance, is non-addictive, and includes Iron, Magnesium, Potassium, Calcium, Sodium, and Phosphorous. Luckily I like terere because it is a huge part of the culture here!

We´ve been really lucky with the weather here so far. We had a bit of a hot spell last week where you couldn´t do anything without sweating and it was hard to sleep but since Friday it has been cool enough at night to need a blanket and during the day we are mostly in the shade at class so no problems there.

Next week we´re all off for Long Field Practice when our agroforestry group will split into two groups to visit actual Peace Corps Volunteers. Three other volunteers, a language teacher, and I will be going about an hour and a half south of where we now are for our visit. We will all be staying with different host families and then doing everything from teaching about cooking with soy and still having Guarani class to touring a wetland that they are trying to develop into an ecotourism site. It sounds like it will be crazily busy but it´s the closest we´ll get to being volunteers before we swear in in December so I´m really excited.

The following Monday is a milestone in that we will receive our site assignments. Once this happens I should be able to have a much better idea of what my life will be like for the next two years while still having no idea what-so-ever.

I´m half way done with training already and excited and nervous that I can see the end of the training wheels period approaching.