Every Tuesday during BYU Clubs Night, students gather in the Wilkinson Center to drink yerba mate together.
Yerba mate, an herbal tea with origins in South America, has given students the opportunity to experience the culture of bonding and connection that mate offers.
Elijah Swolgaard, president of the yerba mate club, founded the group in 2022 upon returning from his mission in Chile. After attending a BYU Spanish class and meeting peers who served in Argentina, he discovered their shared interest in mate and decided to start the club.
The club was officially founded midway through the fall semester of 2022, after Swolgaard completed the process of registering for a club.
At first, the club consisted of mainly of Swolgaard, his girlfriend, his brother and his cousin.
“It was really small; nobody knew about it,” Swolgaard said.
When the winter semester began, the club started to grow.
“Now we have thirty-something people attending every week; there are different people that come, so we’re trying to get people to stay but it’s a good amount of people,” Swolgaard said.
Michael Bown, secretary of the yerba mate club, first tried the drink while serving a mission in Argentina.
“You can put a lot of stuff in the mate because it's very bitter. You can put honey in it; a lot of people put sugar in it, but if you want to be a true Argentine, they say, you don’t put sugar or anything in it, you just drink it straight,” Bown said.
Bown said many people from his mission who attend the club are very tied to the culture.
“I feel like we brought a lot of people from my mission that have a lot of love for mate that still drink mate,” Bown said
While on his mission, Bown said yerba mate played a huge role in ministering.
“That’s what we did on our missions, we would enter people’s houses and they would offer us mate and we would teach them the gospel,” Bown said.
Along with showing himself that he can be part of something by being involved in the club, Bown said the message of mate is to bring people together.
“We have people from all different majors, all different social backgrounds, and we bring them together and have a good time and reminisce on other good times and make new memories with new people who have never even experienced mate,” Bown said.
Larisa Wendt, an Argentinian student, was raised in Germany but enjoys attending the club because she gets to interact with students who have served in Argentina and have a connection to her heritage, giving her the chance to hear and practice Spanish.
“It gives me a chance to be surrounded by people who know that culture a little more than I do. I’ve never been to Argentina so I somewhat feel connected because I have heritage from there but I don’t quite know it,” Wendt said.
Although yerba mate is not German, Wendt's mother would drink it almost every day. When Wendt is away from Germany, she said she finds herself drinking more mate because it provides her with a piece of home.
Wendt said the club showcases the social aspect of mate.
"I'm not necessarily the person who goes to people and starts a conversation, but there is usually always someone who will come to me and start it," Wendt said.
Swolgaard said what he loves most about the club is that the culture of mate in South America is similar to that within the Yerba Mate Club.
“It’s really all about the culture where you sit down and drink mate and you just chill and relax, and that’s what I wanted the club to be, was just a place where all the people who have drunken mate can come together and have a place to hang out,” Swolgaard said.
The mate club meets every Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. in room 3238 of the Wilkinson Center.