Thursday, October 1, 2009

The Mate Man-Purse

"Why are all of the men carrying man-purses?" my friend Emily asked me when she was visiting for a week.

"Ha, ha, ha, man-purses?" I laughed, "they aren't man-purses, they're materas (or mate bags). That is the container they use to carry their mate cup, straw, thermos, and yerba mate. Silly Emily. They are unisex carrying devices, not man-purses."


Ahhh, yes, but time would prove me wrong. We happened to befriend a few waiters at the Mercado Del Puerto who we met up with after they got off of work, and lo-and-behold eventually the conversation turned to Uruguay's favorite drink and pastime--mate." Our new friend said, "Oh well, I would let you try mate, but here in my mate bag I don't have mate."

"Oh really, you don't have mate in your mate bag? So what do you have in there?"


"Well, let me show you," he says as he opens up his leather bag strung over his shoulder. Gasp. Inside he had a gigantic bottle of hair gel, deodorant, cologne (ironically pronounced "perfume" in Spanish), and other beauty supplies.

One word: deception.

Now I know Uruguayan men, now I know what you carry in your mate bag man purse!

3 comments:

  1. bahahaha! I completely forgot about this! That is so funny. How fooled we were! We should have gotten a picture of that. Who knows what other men may have hidden in there...

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  2. wait...how did you get these pictures?

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  3. Good question my friend. I'm stealthy.

    (And I knew I wanted to write this post for awhile, so I totally pretended to take a photo of something just beyond these poor random matera-carrying men. I didn't imagine any of my male friends would appreciate appearing on the "man purse" post. haha)

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