There are many, many benefits to living with a host family during your first few months in country and at site as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Some of these benefits are really mundane. Living with a host family, you don't need to figure out things like where to buy toilet paper in your new community, or how to work strange new appliances in the kitchen right away (or, how to cook over an open fire, if that's something you've never done before), or how to pay for utilities (if you have them). On a more significant level, living with a host family gives you a community of people you can bring your most sensitive cultural questions to without jeopardizing your work relationships. And because these people have been placed in a familial role, they can be comfortable telling you things like "that's actually really rude here" or "if you go to work dressed like that, every one will think you're a prostitute". These are things that you, as a volunteer, need to know, but are really better coming from family than a work acquaintance.
There is, however, also a downside to the host family relationship. Being placed within a family structure like this, in some ways makes the host family responsible for your well being. In an effort to live up to this responsibility, sometimes the host family takes a more active role in the volunteer's life than would be appropriate in the States. In our own host family, there are several different fronts in which our very caring host grandmother has wanted more control over my decisions than I was really comfortable giving her. Of course, this has sometimes been true of my grandmother back in the US, so in some ways it makes me feel right at home.
As a grown-a** woman, it chafes the soul to have my food choices decided for me: if I'm not to cook for myself, then I at least want to be able to decide how much of each dish I'm going to eat and how I'm going to season my food. However, in our home, it's quite common for our host grandmother to add more food to my plate if she feels I haven't eaten enough, or to add salt or garlic to my food if I haven't seasoned my portion to her standards. Similarly, if I haven't dressed in clothes she feels are warm enough, she expects me to go upstairs and change into something warmer. I suppose that this isn't different than my grandmother at home, but I feel much more comfortable ignoring my own grandma when she gets too pushy (sorry, Grammy.)
I try to explain that I am an adult and I can make these kinds of decisions for myself, but it is difficult to stand on this principal, since in Armenia, there are many things I actually can't do for myself yet: I can't reliably navigate public transportation. Sometimes I can't read street signs or storefronts. I don't know how to buy many food staples in the supermarket (for example, the supermarket stocks only sugar cubes on its shelves. I learned last week that if you want granulated sugar, you need to go to the counter and ask for poshi-shakar, or 'sugar dust' instead). Furthermore, I know that my host grandmother makes these choices for me because she is trying to take good care of me. In the end, I have to weigh my own need for independence with the fact that in many ways I am her responsibility- and so I try to comply with as many of her expectations as I can, although sometimes I have to draw a line in the proverbial sand and to what's right for me.
So far, this line has mostly been drawn at food. These days, I only eat the things that I serve myself, and I've had to rather firmly decline her attempts to season my food for me on a few occasions. It distresses our host grandmother- who will continue to put food on my plate long after I've explained that I'm full or don't want to eat a particular dish. I don't want to upset her, but I also don't want to make myself sick. It's a balancing act, to be sure, but when it comes to food, I've decided that my own well-being has to come before what our host grandmother thinks is best for me. On the other hand, I've started dressing with an eye towards what our host grandmother will think is appropriately warm for the weather.
Striking a good balance between our host family's beliefs about what is best and our own judgments is difficult, and I suspect it will continue to be difficult for us as longs as Sam and I live with a host family. But the benefits of having this wonderful group of people looking out for us and making sure our lives here start out successfully is well worth the difficulties that come with it.
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