It’s a typical weekday in my host family house. There’s only slightly more noise than usual, since the 4 year-old has the flu and hasn’t gone to kindergarten all week. The 9 year-old is somewhere along the autism spectrum, and has gone to school less than 10 times in the 2 years I’ve lived here. He has boundless amounts of energy, and no constructive outlet to release it. I tried teaching him the alphabet, but he couldn’t focus long enough to learn the letter “O.” I started with the “O” because it’s just a circle. Once convinced he had learned his first letter, I asked him to pick out the “O” in a word. He couldn’t. I asked him to find the letter that was a circle. He couldn’t, or simply didn’t care. After several sessions with no progress, I came to the harsh realization that I have neither the tools nor experience in special education literacy strategies. More than that, I had no patience. Living with a host family, being a stranger in the community, spending 24/7 trying to figure out how to inspire people to work, and conducting every aspect of my life in a foreign language…well, I had no more to give to my autistic host brother. Every person that visited my house asked how I lived there. “They’re my family,” I thought. According to reports of other volunteers’ families, I felt I was lucky. My host parents are Evangelical, they don’t drink, hardly raise their voices (except when scolding the kids), and treat me better than one of their own. After two years, I am a part of the family, but never stopped being a guest. I always get served first, given the best chair, served the biggest chunk of meat (if there is any), and sometimes my host mom makes a special dish that she knows only I will eat because no one else is used to eating veggies. When I’m sick, she makes special tea with fresh herbs, depending on my symptoms. If she leaves town for the day to run errands, she cooks lunch in the morning and leaves it for me. In the mornings as the kids start screaming at 6:00am, I hear her whispering angrily to be quiet, because Erica is sleeping.
It’s 11:00am, and it’s the first day in two weeks that the electricity has stayed on all day (so far). Nearing the end of my service, there is an incredible amount of documents that need to be written, in English and Spanish. But who can concentrate enough to write an articulate document? Since the kids and fam are here during the day, my quiet time tends to be after dinner when everyone settles down and then sleeps. So, between 8:00pm and 11:00pm I might get a few hours of quality quiet time. Hopefully the electricity won’t go out today.
