Host Family lessons

During the last year of my Peace Corps service I lived with a host family. My family lived in a small city near an international border. Ethnically they are Tatar - a people who are historically Muslim and are originally from a homeland surrounded by the Russian state. This meant that they had to be resilient in the face of frequent provocations lobbed at them by their more numerous Christian neighbors. My host family was small and consisted of a mom, a host brother, and a host sister. Each member of the family reacted to their reality as a Tatar living in Central Asia in a post Soviet world in their own way. The way they transitioned into their new reality is instructional to us all as we enter a world in which our religious, linguistic, and political affiliations are gradually marginalized by the forces of globalization.

My host mother was a hard-working woman who was born and raised in the Soviet Union. While I was living in her house she worked on top of a steep hill at a Soviet-era hot springs resort. At the resort she served as the librarian. She lived to see the stabilization after World War Two and eventually a period of relative comfort and calm. She also lived to experience the stagnation that gradually sapped the union of confidence, and solidarity. It was the prior period of relative comfort and calm that she appreciated and was nostalgic for.
The war was over, Kruschev denounced Stalin, Gagarin went to space, and for a time it seemed like the Soviet Union might be a tolerable place to live. I still remember her, stirring a big pot of barley or rice over a gas stove that barely generated heat, saying longingly; ‘oh how we use to live!’ Her desire was for calm and organization. Negotiating the black-market and all the other unknowns of the post Soviet world was just too much.

My brother also lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union. We use to lift weights or watch TV and he’d talk about how Russia had been the glue that had kept everything together. His general belief was that Russia represented the forces of progress, materialism, and technology and stood against chaos and mysticism. Whenever I would come home and share a story about how something insanely dangerous or amazingly inefficient happened, he was unsurprised. “Of course it was that way”, he’d respond, “without Russia and Russians Kyrgyzstan lost its way.”

Then there was my host sister. She speaks Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Tatar, Turkish, Russian, and English. She is endlessly curious about the world around her and adaptable. She would come home and speak Russian to her family, English to me, say hi to the neighbors in Kyrgyz or Uzbek, then get up the next morning and go to her private school to study Turkish. I never had any real political conversation with her but if I had asked about nationalism or patriotism I’m not sure if she would have had any strong opinions. She is undeniably international and proud to be a multi-lingual Tatar in Kyrgyzstan.

It has been almost 6 years since I left my host family in Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan has limped along, ousted the grizzled and corrupt leader it inherited from Soviet times, and my family moved North to the capital city. It now seems clear that my host family’s perspectives are not aberrations unique to life in Kyrgyzstan. Here in America I know people, like my host mother, who are remorseful as they loose the stability and familiarity of times passed. I know people like my host brother who react with concern to the exotic and unfamiliar traditions that are taking root around him. And I know others like my host sister who thrive in the new openness and diversity.

Comfort with diversity and interconnectedness are important tools to absorb the huge seismic changes caused by globalization. It is becoming more and more obvious that what happened in Kyrgyzstan and how members of my host family reacted isn’t so much about the collapse of the Soviet Union as it is about living in an increasingly post nation-state world. The challenge we’re all facing, no matter what country we live in or our ethnic or religious affiliations, is that certain political and economic ideas are becoming common features of more and more countries. The once unique characteristics of our economic and political system transcend national boundaries and our ability to interact with diverse and distant people is increasingly possible and easy.

The question we’re all left with, therefore, is what is the use of political lines across maps when the reasons we required them are increasingly irrelevant? The uncomfortable feelings my host mother and host brother felt were because the rug of political and patriotic familiarity was pulled-out from under them. The sense of opportunity and curiosity my sister felt came as she emerged from the constraints of political and national obligation. What they experienced, and what I suspect what everyone is experiencing no matter where they are, is how, like my host mother, brother, and sister, they will react to these changes.