Our Family of Six

A long time ago, I was a teenager.  My kids find that hard to believe sometimes.  When I was 14, I heard about an organization called “Amigos de las Americas”.  http://www.amigoslink.org/  The briefest explanation I can give about it is that it is kind of like a summertime Peace Corps for high school and college students to go to countries in Latin America.  But you have to pay your own way.  Young adults in their 20s are the ones in charge “in country.” 

Somehow I convinced my parents to let me travel to a third world country to do volunteer work.   It was one of the most amazing experiences in my life.  In 1981, when I was 15, I travelled to Honduras for just over a month.  I worked with the Dental Program.  We went to schools, distributed toothbrushes, and taught kids to brush their teeth.  I lived with a host family and I called them mom, aunt, and my sisters.  (No dad in this family.)  My sister Nancy was the same age as I was.  We shared a bedroom with my two-year old sister Eyra.  She was absolutely terrified of me; she kept on calling me a ghost.  (I am very pale.)  My Spanish was not that great, but I muddled through. 

The experience really opened my eyes to how much of the world lives.  I lived with a relatively well-off family, but compared to my life in the US, we were very poor.  We had electricity and running water for a few hours most days.  I thought it was so cool that a family would agree to let a strange American teenager live in their house and make me a part of their family.   That was when I first had the thought that when I grew up I would love to have someone from another culture come and live with me.

The next two summers I spent with Amigos again.  One month was not long enough the first time.  In 1982 I spent two months in the Dominican Republic doing vaccinations.   I lived in the slums of the capital city, Santo Domingo.  My family was very poor.   No electricity or running water.  The “toilet” was an outhouse in the back of our house.   I lived with my parents, aunt, and 6 children.  All 9 of them slept piled on one queen size bed, and I slept on my own tiny cot next to them.  Sometimes I would wake up with a kid on top of me who had joined me to escape the crowd.   

My aunt’s baby died a few months after I left.  My aunt stopped breastfeeding because the formula companies said it was better than breastmilk. She used contaminated water to feed diluted formula because she couldn’t afford to mix it full strength. This is not an uncommon occurrence in the Third World.  I could do a long editorial on that, but it’s not the point of this particular tale. (If you want to learn more about this issue, see:   http://www.whale.to/w/baby_milk2.html)

In 1983, I spent two months with Amigos, building latrines in Mexico.  The town we were in was so poor that no single family could afford to feed myself and my partners, so the people took turns bringing food to us.  There were often days that the family responsible for feeding us couldn’t afford to do it, so we would ask the family who owned the local store.  They became the closest thing we had to a host family.  Although I had a wonderful experience, I really missed living with a family.

These were the days before the internet, and in countries where the postal services were not very reliable.  From the time I left until I returned home, I had no communication with my parents.  Later, my mom told me that she did not sleep while I was gone.  Once I became a parent, I realized how difficult letting me go must have been for my parents.  I’m so glad they did; these experiences with Amigos really did change my life.