Home Stay

During the pre-departure seminar, I was both excited and worried about living with my homestay family. I was very nervous about adapting to a new living environment, staying with people I did not know well, and simply not feeling at home in place that I had not called home quite yet. I worried if the family would grow to like me or always make me feel like an outsider or a guest. Given the very negative notions I had about my homestay family experience, I was completely overjoyed that I had become so close to my host mom and the rest of the family so quickly. Aunty Odess truly made me feel right at home by checking up on me throughout the day, taking Alex and I to family and cultural events, and even caring for me when I was sick. By the end of my stay at her home, I knew that I had formed a new family in Zambia that I would remember and cherish for the rest of my life.

When thinking back on my homestay experience, the moment that stands out the most to me would be the time Aunty Odess took my friends and I to see the new home she was building. In her current home, Aunty Odess lives with her two sons, Christian and Marquis, her nieces and nephew, Mutinta, Rhema, and Nicholas, and her house worker, Margret. With such a packed house and consistent visitors and customers for her cake business, she has always wanted to expand her house. As we walked through the unfinished hallways of the new house, Aunty Odess pointed out what would be the master bedroom, bathrooms, and the kids’ bedrooms. Then, she turned to Alex and I and explained that one room would be built for us if we ever wanted to come back and visit. I was so touched that she had kept us in her thoughts when planning the layout of her new house and was so invested in making us feel like family despite our very different backgrounds. This was an important moment for me not only during my homestay experience but also during the trip as a whole as it really spoke to the important values in the Zambian culture, one of them most obviously being hospitality. Aunty Odess allowed all of us to write notes to her on one of the pillars installed in her patio so that she would always remember us. Seeing the joy in her face when she read our messages aloud showed me how close Aunty Odess and I had become. It became apparent to me that my presence was appreciated, an aspect of my homestay experience that really made me feel loved and taken care of.

Even though I am no longer living with my homestay family, I am so grateful to have been given the opportunity to get to know them and learn from them. I will cherish this memory and many others that I made with my homestay family forever. I will continue to visit them during the rest of my time here in Zambia and also stay in contact with them when I return to the U.S.