Honoring guests

From Aimee - 

When we arrived at Madras Christian College's rural extension Family Life Institute, the elementary school children there were waiting for us.  The girls in pink are in 2nd and 3rd std., and they placed a beaded necklace around each visitor's neck, standing with us as we watched the morning assembly.  These girls and others in the 5th std. had also prepared traditional dances to perform for us.  We have a video of the performance that we would have liked to post here, but it would have taken all day to load.

When we visited MCCSS, an organization that both offers microloans to self-help groups and shelters women and girls who have been rescued from commercial sex work, the community greeted us with flowers, sandalwood paste and traditional Hindu blessings.  The rescued children had also prepared dance performances, and we were even invited to dance with them.

At MCC Campus school where we teach classes on Mondays and Wednesdays, we are given chocolates whenever it is a child's birthday.

The wife of one of our placement supervisors bought us each a sari.

And in day-to-day interactions, using just a hint of butchered Tamil thrills our hosts immensely.

We have felt blessed to receive such hospitality, and it has made me consider difference between this hospitality we receive as Americans, compared to the hospitality we give foreigners in the United States.  Would American elementary schools really invite groups of ordinary foreigners to tour the premises, take pictures, and would they prepare special assembly performances?  Do we regularly greet groups of foreigners with gifts, simple but generous from the standpoint of having relatively little to offer?  Are we thrilled when visitors speak our native English?

Likely the answer is generally no.  It's easy to point to anti-immigration movements and the difficulty foreigners experience trying to get a visa.  There are surely exceptions to this, but generosity seems very ubiquitous here.

For one thing, we have been amazed by the number of people who speak English, and how easy that makes it for us to exist here.  Given how little Americans are encouraged to learn foreign languages, it's not as easy for foreigners in our land.

We have felt like honored guests here, and that is different than just being a guest.