Family time

One part of the Peace Corps experience that was particularly challenging for me was living with host families. On the one hand host families are incredibly important for learning the language and culture, for making connections, keeping us safe, in addition to providing a safe accommodations. But the reversion to being a dependent after having so recently achieved adulthood was difficult. 

Staying with a host family meant being forced to make conversation, eat food I didn’t want to eat, time my schedule to theirs, and essentially become a child again. Paraguayans have a wonderful generous desire to make guests feel welcome. With the language and cultural barrier this can become incredibly over-bearing, with the merest investigative question interpreted as an unfulfilled desire and attempts to accommodate the guest feeling like an exhausting high-stakes quiz show, with both the vocabulary and cultural context opaque to the participant. One thing I hated most was being waited on for meals. If I ever left the table for some reason, coming back my food and beverage would be gone. I couldn’t prepare my own meals or wash my own dishes or create my own elaborate coffee rituals. I would often eat alone, which is not the point of host family life, because my exalted status as a guest put me above the regular meals  

In general in Paraguay, and to a greater or lesser degree throughout Latin American, men are expected to behave like children, unable to clean or cook or take care of themselves, and to live with their mothers and sisters attending to them until they find a wife who will take care of them in the same way. This was brought home even more to me the other night, as I was drinking beer with an older friend in NG, with strong ideals and a liberal  outlook on life chastise his wife for not properly cleaning the tops of the beer cans to remove the grit. We were sitting, drinking beers that she delivered to us two at a time, while she cooked dinner. He never thanked her or offered to help.

The assumption has been when folks find out I’m not married that I still live with my mother. The first time that happened I didn’t even process it - but later it occurred to how strange an assumption that is compared to my normal perspective. 

All that’s to say that I’m glad I’ve lived enough that I can cook and clean and take care of myself. I love and deeply appreciate the folks hosting me again on this trip - it's incredibly generous of them to have me and fulfilling to be able to visit in this way. It's also been wonderful to get to stay with a young couple who is not at all like this. But my goodness I'm glad I can afford to stay in hotels as well, and that I'll be home soon where I have agency and a wonderful girlfriend who treats me like an adult.