You´ve Heard This One Before

April 9, 2008

When we read or hear about experiences abroad, the stories often include the foreigner randomly being invited into the home of a native, who immediately treats the new visitor like a family. We’ve all heard this story or told it ourselves, and even though it is basically the same story just told with different characters and settings, it never ceases to fascinate us. In the States, we don’t invite random people into our homes. We don’t answer the door for people we don’t know. We use caller ID and don’t answer the phone for people we don’t know. We’re too “busy.”

Now, I haven’t had this experience of being invited to a random person’s home, I just felt like bringing it up….Sike, that would just be weird. I’ve actually had it happen a couple of times, but this was the best one so far. Here’s what happened: Last Saturday, I went with my host mom to the Catholic Church in San Lorenzo, which is a town next to ours. She teaches Catechism to 12-year-olds there each week. On that particular day, the teachers had not prepared any lessons because the kids were going to be watching a movie about Semana Santa (Holy Week), which is going on right now. Unfortunately, the open air salon where they were showing the movie does not exactly have the best acoustics, so no one in the group of over sixty children could hear the movie. Now, I don’t know a lot, but I do know that 60 children + a failed activity + no backup plan = a big disaster. Kids were talking, playing, fighting, and running all over the place, while most of the adults looked for other jobs to do, obviously trying to exempt themselves from the job of disciplinarian. As an outsider, coming in for the first time, I was not about to start giving my opinion of the situation, so I just painfully observed. Finally, and much to everyone’s relief, the adults just let the kids run around and play outside until it was time for them to leave.

I spent most of this time talking to a 9-year-old boy, named Josef. He obviously wanted to practice his English, which is pretty common here, but he was much more inquisitive and less shy about it than other children (or even adults). I could tell from the moment we started talking that this boy was different. There was intensity in his desire to learn, not just about English, but about everything. He wanted to know about American culture, history, politics, and he wanted to share with me what he knew about his own culture. After talking for about an hour, we went outside where most of the kids were playing. Josef joined a big group of boys playing soccer in a big jumbled mess, with no goals or teams. I decided to ask the boys if I could join in, and they of course thought this was hilarious and were more than happy to oblige. Once I got the ball, I figured it would be fun (at least for me and all the girls watching) to give them a little machismo antidote. In my flip flops and work clothes, I managed to school about half of the 40 or so boys before my host father came to pick me up. As I was saying goodbye I was giggling to myself because all the boys were looking at me like I was an alien, with dropped jaws and wide eyes. I should be clear and explain that this is not because I am an exceptionally good soccer player. The machismo culture that exists here gives girls no reason to play soccer, so the fact that a grown, female gringa would not only ask to play with them, but actually hang in there with these boys was pretty shocking. It was a good time, and is in fact related to randomly being invited over to someone’s house (I haven’t forgotten then point of the story…yet).

That night, I received a call from my host mom’s boss from the church. She said that the aunt of one of the students called her and wanted to contact me about possibly coaching soccer with a group of women in the town. I was very surprised but definitely interested. I called the woman and it turns out she was the aunt of Josef. Her name is Doña Zaida, and she invited me to her house that night to celebrate her birthday with their family, but I couldn’t go so we made plans for last night. Doña Zaida’s daughter, Margarita, and Josef met me at the church and we walked to their house together. In spite of the fact that I had never met them, and am still struggling in many respects to speak their language, they could not have been more gracious or made me feel more comfortable. At the house I met the rest of the family, and over a dinner of cold ham sandwiches (with extra mayo and ketchup of course), we talked for nearly 5 hours about just about everything. Doña Zaida and Margarita (who was my age) had gone to the Women’s World Cup in 2003, and were eager to show me all of their autographs and photos from the trip. It never came up that they wanted me to coach any group of women, so I have no clue how that idea ever surfaced, but they are going to help me network in the community in order to find groups for the various projects we need to complete while in training. They also invited me to a concert next week and to go to the northern part of the country to visit more of their family. Although there won’t be time for those trips during my training, I’m looking forward to making plans with them once I am moved into my 2-year site.

Today and the rest of Holy Week will be spent with my host family, and doing several PC projects that we have due next week. In our CYF program meeting last Wednesday people stated to realized just how much they are expecting us to get done in the next couple of weeks, and that it is virtually impossible. We are kind of a guinea pig training class, because they have implemented a more thorough and demanding program for us to complete before we can swear in as volunteers. In typical Peace Corps fashion, we will make things happen with what we have available to us, but I honestly have no clue how it will all get done. Right now I need to go to the grocery store because there is no toilet paper in the house, which makes me feel sad and helpless when I need to use the bathroom. Why not use paper towels or tissues, you might ask. Yeah, we don’t have those.