Lefse and Mate
Global Missions Newsletter for November by Justin Haaheim
The days are passing both slowly and quickly here in Argentina. Sometimes I can hardly believe that I’ve been here almost three months now, but at the same time my memories from Minnesota in July and August seem like so long ago. Don’t worry, you still remain very much in my thoughts, but if we measure time by what has been seen then it really has been a long time — a time for me full of experiences that defy the kind of solidification and articulation that they warrant, because already I feel change and growth in Argentina by things I don’t understand and can’t always grab onto. I hope every month I can share some piece of all of this that is so important to me, and I hope that it takes on meaning for you too as someone close to me.
Death and Rebirth
Church began solemnly yesterday. Four weeks ago a member of the congregation at Martin Lutero (where I go to church) named Guillermo spoke beautifully during the service about a decision he had made: he wanted to be confirmed, and he wanted to do it in and with the support of the people he had come to love at Martin Lutero. He told us he was 33 and that he was battling cancer, and that he really valued this community of faith he had become a part of. About a week ago his health started deteriorating rapidly, and on Saturday night he passed away.
Church began solemnly, but it also took on a distinctly different tone as the service continued with the baptism of a beautiful baby girl. I couldn’t help but think about, in the midst of sadness for a person that I had begun to know and that had been part of our community, that there was kind of a beauty in what happened on Sunday. The juxtaposition of death and of rebirth as a child of God. The service was a powerful reminder for me of my own baptism and of my own recent steps in faith, and I came away with a kind of peace thinking about the continuity of one beautiful baby girl being embraced into the arms of God at the beginning of life as another beautiful child of God was embraced into the arms of God at the end. Please let Guillermo and his loved ones be in your thoughts and prayers.
The Last Months
For my part, I am doing really well here. I feel pretty blessed to be able to say that. Certainly the last couple months have come with many difficult times, many of which have been magnified for me by language and the many different ways that language barriers can lead to misunderstanding and judgment. But now as Thanksgiving quickly approaches, I give thanks for the many times when I have been treated with compassion and kindness instead of misunderstanding or judgment. I give thanks for grace and a love that has uplifted me here in Argentina.
DÃa del Pavo (Turkey Day)
Thanksgiving is approaching and the six of us volunteers plus Kate and David, our country coordinators, are preparing for the next of our monthly gatherings, which is in Uruguay next week. On Wednesday the 22nd, Lesley, Stacey, Carrie, Rachel and I will meet in Buenos Aires to take a boat across the RÃo de la Plata to eventually meet Meredith (who’s placement is in Uruguay) at a retreat center in Colonia Valdense. Thursday is Thanksgiving, and we’ve devoted the whole day to just hanging out and preparing the dinner for the evening. When we first started planning this, everyone got really excited and started talking about what they wanted to make — each person picking something that is a family tradition for them.
I told the group I’d like to make lefse. For those that aren’t familiar with lefse (lehf-suh), it’s a Norwegian flatbread made from potatoes that’s often eaten with butter and sugar, all rolled up into a Norwegian tube of deliciousness. It’s about the same size and shape as a big tortilla, but it’s got a really different taste. Making lefse has always been a tradition for my family, especially around the holidays, but in the last months here in Argentina it has taken on some new meanings for me.
A few weeks ago I was talking with Pedro and Mirta, my homestay parents, and we got to talking about recipes and food we like. I mentioned that there were a few things that I’d like to try to make for them (you know, all the healthy things like cookies and brownies and peach cobbler), and that I especially wanted to make lefse. Incidentally, this conversation about making food together and sharing of what’s important to us ended up being an ice breaker moment for us, and we’ve only gotten closer since then.
So last Friday evening was lefse night at the Terceros’ house with the three of us all working in the kitchen together (see pictures on the web). It was honestly a really fun experience to introduce them to one of my family’s traditions, and it was fun to spend time with them — just talking, rolling out the dough, throwing the lefse one by one onto the makeshift lefse griddle, and of course getting flour everywhere. About halfway through the evening I put some water on the stove for “mate”, and then I realized a little bit later what an interesting encounter of traditions was happening.
Mate (mah-tay) is a very distinctive and very characteristic Argentine and Uruguayan tradition in which chopped up “mate yerba” leaves (yair-bah, or share-ba as we say here in Buenos Aires) are put into a fist-sized gourd, also called a mate. The yerba leaves are more or less like tea leaves, and so they make a kind of instant tea when hot water is poured over them and then drunk through the bombilla (bohm-bee-zsha), a special type of metal straw with small holes in the end to keep out the actual leaves.
What’s important about mate (besides that it’s good) is that it’s a communal tradition. Sometimes it’s drunk alone, but when there are other people around it is almost guaranteed that it will be shared. Groups pass around the mate in a circle with each person drinking from it. This happens at home, with friends, at parties, at seminars, at work – anywhere. After each person is done the mate is sent back to the person who prepared it to be refilled with hot water and then passed onto the next person. In the end mate is about being with people and passing the time. No one ever drinks mate fast (as in no one ever says “I’m on my way out the door but I’m going to chug some mate first”), and it’s not really kosher to just pop in and have some mate and not stay for some conversation. The point is never just to get mate in your stomach and go, just as the point of, say, Thanksgiving dinner is never just to get turkey in your stomach and be done with it all.
For me lefse-making has always been something my whole family has done together. It’s a whole afternoon or evening event with fun conversation, a constant stream of lefse made and lefse eaten, and (this part is important) lots of flour everywhere. Making lefse with my family is something I have always looked forward to, and now bringing that tradition here to my Argentine family has really warmed my heart. Warmed not just for the chance to bring those who care for me closer by sharing part of my family’s traditions and heritage, nor for way the tradition became classically Argentine by the presence of the mate being passed back and forth, but for the presence of a both abstract and tangible communion in the mate and the lefse making. I give thanks for that time together – our own Norske-Argentino breaking of bread.
DiaconÃa/Trabajo (Ministry/Work)
My time at La LecherÃa has been going really well. Certainly, as with my time in Argentina in general, there have been ups and downs (strikes and gutters, in the parlance of our times) and moments of great mental and even physical exhaustion, but every week brings a better sense of what I need to/should/can/want to do there.
If there’s one thing I do with regularity at La LecherÃa it’s teaching English. I’ve got a handful of high school aged kids, one younger girl, and a woman from the barrio that comes for an hour each week to study with me. Beyond that I’m the on-call “profesor de Inglés” helping usually younger kids with worksheets or assignments, or sometimes just teaching whatever. Last week this 5th grade girl Micaela (a real sweetheart) came to me and just wanted to learn something, so we worked on the alphabet with easy example words for each letter (you know like A as in apple, B as in bacteriologist, etc). I’ve really enjoyed this part of my time at La LecherÃa both in the laid-back, straightforward situations like with Micaela, but also in the considerably more challenging situations a few of my advanced students presented me with in September when they came into our first study session and said, “Teach me English.”
Beyond teaching English the kinds of things I do day to day vary. I often spend time with some of the 4th-7th graders just talking or helping with homework or playing chess or whatever. I’ve recently started a more structured weekly thing where I present brainteasers to the kids. Last week I did Euler-paths, which is the nerdy graph theory term (I’m a Computer Science major, give me a break) for a drawing of points connected by lines in which you have to trace over all the lines exactly once without lifting your pencil from the page. The trick is that some are impossible (which I can prove formally, and it’s too bad the kids don’t understand technical English, cause I’m sure they’d *love* that.), and I presented them in order from an easy version to a little bit harder version to an impossible version. It was honestly really fun to see the kids having a good time with all this, and seeing them process the last one and saying things like “I did it. I can so do it!” and then when they give it a few tries at the chalkboard saying “I totally had it! I just forgot.” Next week I think we’ll do a couple more and then I’ll show them the trick.
Recently, I’ve also been working on starting two different music groups that should be getting going in the next week or so. The first one is a STOMP-type percussion group that’ll play on 5 gallon sized buckets that we’re finding in the streets. The other one is more or less a rock band that some of the kids are interested in forming. We already have parts of a drumset, a bass guitar and some sound stuff, and the admins at La LecherÃa put me in charge of figuring out what we’re lacking and getting the group up on its feet. We’ll see how that all goes.
Well that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the mujeres are fuertes, all the hombres are hermosos, and all the pibes sacan dieces. As always, I would love to hear from you, even if it’s just a quick email about how things are going for you. May you be blessed in this week of thanksgiving, family and friends.
As Pedro says, “lo mejor, che.” All the best. Peace and love from Argentina,
Justin
p.s. If you’re wondering about the “strikes and gutters, in the parlance of our times” phrase I used earlier, it’s a quote from one of my favorite movies “The Big Lebowski”, man.
Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/justin.haaheim
Google group site with my previous newsletter: http://groups.google.com/group/justins-yagm-friends
ELCA site with information on my program: http://www.elca.org/globalserve/youngadults
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