Living in a host family – Volunteering part 7

Read from the start (part 1) or previous post (part 6)

My organization want all their volunteers to stay with host families. The exchange should include culture, not only work skills. Altough it was difficult some times I’m realy grateful for this experience. As I have written in part 5 I was not the perfect family member. The difference from Norway to Damaraland was so big that I needed to stay alone doing something known to me like watching friends or playing games on my computer. I spent a lot of time in my room. I guess this looked like I didn’t want to be with my family.

The family had to wonderful parents and their four kids aged from about 20 to 2. In Damara culture (and many African tribes) all kids have two mothers. The one that born them and another one that also treats them as their kids (this is my understanding like everything else in this blog). This made it more flexible for the families. The kids lived in the place most suitable at this time. A few years before I arrived the oldest son lived with his brother from another mother for a period and now they both lived in my family. The oldest dougther went to a bording school in Outjo 135 km away (the closest town). The second boy went to primary school and the youngest girl was only 2 years. To sum this up I lived with 2 parents, 2 old youths, one boy and a babygirl. In adddition to this some other relatives (kids) lived here parts of the year and the oldest daugther came home for some weekends.

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I think my need for having time in my room to take in and handle all the impressions I got was seen as I didn’t want to be with my family. I understand this and if I could do something over again it would be to communicate more about my feelings to my family, but I don’t think I understood what I felt and why I did what I did. I was young and alone in a world very far away from everything known to me. This was before smartphones and internet was only available two places in town. Most of my communication with Norway was by email, not the best way of communicating, but I wrote them at home and brought them to and went to an internet place about once a week to send and recive new emails.

I think the most difficult part for me and the host family was the cultural differences (read more in a later post). Things done with good intention was regarded rude or not nice by the other part. “Ubuntu” is important in most of Africa and a wonderful ideologi that I love, but far from the individualism I was used to. The willingness to always be there for eachother is important in Africa and I think my apparence excluded myself from becoming a part of this big “us”. I think the history og apartheid also made it more difficult for me to become a part of “us” I think my knowledge about culture and history and lack of life experience kept me from becoming an equal member of the family.

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I am very grateful to my family for opening up their home and family to me. I don’t think I would be the same person today without this experience. I’m sorry I didn’t do more to become a more integrated part of the family and would definitly recomand to live in a host family if possible, just talk about your feelings and try to share more about yourself and your own culture than I did. I cannot hide I found it difficult at times and after 9 months I moved to a new family. I loved my new family and it was a great match with me, but the next volunteer taking my place didn’t like this place so she mostly lived with some relatives of my new family ,so I think it is hard to live in a family so different from what you are used to and that it is difficult to understand why it’s hard because you don’t understand each others culture.

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One advise I will give if living in a host family is to remember this is a family opening up their home to you. They only have good intentions, so you have to bear up with things that frustrates you or you don’t understand. Living in a host family will make you grow as a person and is mostly positive.

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