Privileged

 It has been an amazing experience to live with a family here.  I will not lie it was a real challenge in the beginning to live with a family here. Coming into this we really didn’t have a ton of information about the socioeconomic status of our families. The only homes I had ever visited in Guatemala and Central America were one roomed, dirt floored homes where they may or may not have running water; so that was the image I had in my head before we arrived here. When we got here our coordinators told us that the families that we would be living with ranged from lower middle class to upper middle class elites here. With that being said I guess I had a notion in my mind of what my home was going to be like in accordance with a lower to upper middle class home in the US. The first day I moved in I nearly had a panic attack, the house was not as I had expected. The bathrooms do not always have toilet paper and the toilets don’t always work. I had expectation in my head of what a middle class home should look like. Now that we have been here for three weeks, I guess I have digested my initial thoughts. My family seems to be fairly well off. They have a dog, a large fish tank, Rosi my host mother does not make her own tortillas and all of their four children go to school.  In general I think we go into things with expectations and “norms” to be upheld.  As a group one of the things we have challenged ourselves with is the notion of things here being “weird”. Challenging ourselves not to judge, who are we to judge what is “normal” or “not normal”.  

Being in a minority here has also been a new experience; standing out because of my skin color is something I had never experienced before.  While it is a new experience, negative or not, I’m unsure but it is a learning experience.  In the markets (especially last weekend in Chichi) we are especially targeted by the vendors to buy their goods. At times it is truly uncomfortable, having people following me around trying to sell me things. I took a step back, how horrible that I am a white person and seen as having money. What a horrible stigma? For me to feel that way was hard, but people of different racial minorities and majorities face racial stigmas every day of their lives; in the work place, in educational settings and on the streets. 

If anyone is interested in learning more about some of the issues we have been talking about in our group here is a really great article we read: White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack http://nymbp.org/reference/WhitePrivilege.pdf    it’s kind of long, but it’s really good!