Blog Post #3 -- Homestay Experience -- SM

Blog Post #3 – Homestay Experience

My homestay experience will be without a doubt the most memorable part about my time in Zambia. Aunt P, Mumbuna, Christine, Oliver, and Ezra all welcomed Priyanka and me into their home and gave us an up-close look at their family dynamics. There were ups and downs, and many things I learned along the way.

First, I learned a lot of practical skills. I now know how to wash an unbelievable number of dishes in about 30 minutes, where at first it used to take me an hour and a half. Christine was instrumental in teaching me that. I also know how to fix a lot of different issues relating to faulty toilets, having fixed about four different toilets now. On a deeper level, I learned I don’t need social media as much as I once thought. Coming home every day without connectivity led me to paint more often, read more books, and write in my journal more. I didn’t realize how much time I lost in the day going on Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms. When I get back to the states, I’m going to make a bigger effort to keep my scrolling to a minimum and spend my time doing other things.

One less desirable experience I had while in my homestay revolved around a conversation with our mom, Auntie Priscilla. One night while Priyanka and I were getting ready for bed, she came into our room and we started talking about dinner. She asked us what we cooked and we both replied semi-jokingly that we were both terrible cooks, to which she replied “so what will you cook for your husband?” We both looked at each other, a little thrown off, but shrugged and said we’ll probably split up the responsibilities so our husbands can take some of the burden off of us. I also added that that was the kind of relationship I wanted when I grew up – where a woman and man were 50-50 equal. This launched Aunt P into a monologue which Priyanka and I were not ready for. Aunt P lifted up her hands up to eye level and said “here is where a man will always be, and then the woman will be down here” lowering her left hand to her chin. Her reasoning was that the Bible teaches that women are emotional creatures and thus can injure men with their words without realizing it. Therefore, women need to leave room for men to express themselves, be protective over us, and be free. She concluded by saying that if we forced a man into a 50-50 relationship, he would go along with it for a few years but ultimately be the type of person to beat us due to us restricting him. Priyanka and I started to interject, but ultimately just started nodding in agreement to end the conversation.

I’m still not sure what to make of that night, to be honest. After Aunt P left the room we both agreed we would write Christine a letter so that what Aunt P said about women and men wouldn’t be the only thing she heard while growing up. Christianity here can be beautiful thing but also a damaging, patriarchal one. That moment of cognitive dissonance will stick with me because it showed to me how complicated entrenched gender norms are – not just things upheld in the interest of men by men. Gender norms can be upheld by women too, and this also complicates Andrew’s and my research around gender-based violence. My hope going forward is that we can accumulate data, point out gaps in the legal framework around GBV laws, but ultimately acknowledge that there are things which can only change with time. What I can do right now is respect Aunt P’s opinions and appreciate the complexity of her personality as a whole—the things I love, the things I don’t, and the things I still don’t understand. To not do so would be a flattening of her personality and would disregard all the moments we've shared this past month as a family, plenty of which were wonderful and memorable in their own way.