Tandil, Argentina. Valeria Aramburu is a Basque teacher at the Gure Etxea Basque Club in Tandil and also a literature teacher in the local secondary school. When the pandemic and its uncertainty arrived, she got together “with a group of women united by families ties and friendship” and started making scented candles, bath salts and sachets under the name of “Sorgiñak” “aiming to balance the spaces we inhabit through aromatherapy during isolation and to find a the positive during this time of confinement.”
Why Sorgiñak (witches)? In Valeria’s words, “Sorgin in Euskera /sor/: to be born and /egin/: to make/do. To words to give birth referred to the woman who helped in births (midwife). With the passage of time, supernatural powers were also attributed to Sorginak to cure ailments from medicinal herbs and in the same way, the meaning of the name changed.” Several centuries later, Valeria, together with her daughters Itziar and Begoña Kain Aramburu and Belen Urruty continue to “value the healing power of nature above all things.”
Currently, “Sorgiñak” offers aromatic soy wax candles; aromatic bath salts “with native herbs from the pastures in the Pampa” and classic ones from around the world; an aromatic and repellent sachets to preserve clothing. Each of these products is made “according to the paradigm of caring for nature and the environment.”
Products can be ordered on social media –Facebook sorginiak candles; Instagram sorginiak candles–, where they also share a story related to Basque mythology each week.
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