American Idiot

Sometimes I think my host family looks at me like I’m an idiot.  I can't blame them, it kind of makes sense.  To them, I’m completely inept at performing even the simplest of the tasks that they do every day: washing my clothing by hand; using a latrine; showering in a bucket; carrying water; farming; starting a charcoal stove; hanging clothing out to dry; and filtering water.  All of these things are every day occurrences to these people.  To me, and potentially to the majority of American's, these are things we don't even think about much less have any necessity to do. On the other hand though, sometimes it goes both ways.  

On my first day in Namaacha, my Mai and Pai spent about five minutes trying figure out how to open the juice box they wanted to give me for a snack.  To me, that's something that's second nature, sometimes I've been doing since pre-school. Insert straw through foil hole at top of box.  To them though, it was like trying to solve a new york times crossword puzzle.  They had no idea.  

At first, the juice box situation was pretty humorous.  But it got me thinking.  All these tasks I need to learn to survive here, it's kind of like I'm looking at a juice box for the first time too and trying to figure it out. Meanwhile, they're probably sitting there laughing even harder than I was.  I know i would be.