My doña's name is Josefina, but she goes by Fifa. She's incredibly nice. She had make up my room before I arrived and there was a little rose in a little vase beside my bed! She makes this really good, sweet, cinnamony tea every morning, and she never seems to think I'm eating enough! My first morning here she heated up water for me to bathe (I take bucket baths), which surprised me. I'm going to use regular water from now on though if she'll let me, because fuel is expensive! And then today she painted my toenails and taught me bachata!
My eleven-year-old brother José Rafael, whom I've been calling Rafael until now because I thought that was what he went by, but I guess now he prefers José. Anyway he's really sweet and smart and extremely well-behaved. We've been playing cards a ton--they taught me ladrón, and I taught them games too. José loves golf, I swear he could play it for hours! And the first night we played it he got so excited and jumped around every time something happened.
Esmil--I think that's how you spell it--is 4 and super adorable! He's really happy almost all the time--though he can get very whiny when he wants his mom's attention. He loves to play various forms of peek-a-boo, hide-and-seek, and chase with me. And he generally just runs around a lot. Today I taught him how to play war and since he didn't know the numbers I started teaching him to count the items on each card. He was thrilled.
I also met various family members, including Dacy, with whom I went to the salon yesterday and got a haircut.
Today at lunch--the biggest meal of the day here--it struck me that no one else was eating with a fork. And then I noticed most people didn't even have a fork and ate everything with a spoon. I think my doña must have figured out that I use forks more and just gave me one. And the obvious ocurred to me, "Wow, they must think I'm a dork." Now, I am beginning to think this is the strength of staying with a host family; not the experience of encountering "the other," but of being the other. This kind of individual immersion experience--which I experienced with less intensity on the rez--provides something which those of us with privelege so infrequently find: the chance, not to see the rest of the world through the eyes of a priveleged culture, but to see ourselves through their eyes.