筆者がカナダで車を運転していると、バス停で泣いている女の子が目に留まった。車を止めて話しかけてみると、彼女はホームステイ先でひどい目に遭っていることを打ち明け始めた
…。
As we turned the corner, a girl caught my
eye. My mum had seen her, too. "John, stop the car. She is crying!" A
second look confirmed that my mum was right, and I hit the brakes. There was
an Asian girl sitting on her suitcase at a bus stop in a residential
neighborhood, hunched
over with her face buried in her hands, sobbing.
We stopped the car, and, in a soothing
voice, my mum asked, "Are you OK dear? Can we help you?" Intuition
whispered to me that she was Japanese, so I asked the same question in
Japanese. She lifted her face from her hands and looked up at me with
a jolt. Her bloodshot
eyes were
pleading for kindness.
She was
reluctant to let us help her at first, but was
very grateful
for a ride
to her destination. As we drove, she confided
in us with
the most horrendous
homestay horror story that I had ever heard.
The homestay agent had
not screened the family that she stayed with and she had been placed in a money-hungry
family, whose teenage son had
sexually assaulted her. Neither the family nor the broker had believed her
story and the parents had left for a week-long holiday, leaving her alone in the
house with the indecent
son.
She was
off to spend a few nights with some other Japanese girls who were renting an
apartment. When we dropped
her off
at the apartment, each one of the girls told us their own homestay horror
story.
One girl had been placed in the basement
suite of a home under
construction. Another girl had stayed in a house with no family. The family
had asked her to dogsit
while they went camping.
These stories grieved
my mum and I. How
could this be? My family has hosted many Japanese homestay students, and I
personally homestayed for almost five years in Japan. I know of countless
Japanese who have had wonderful homestay experiences.
As
it turned out, the common
element in these girls' experiences seemed to be that they had trusted a
stranger to make all of their homestay arrangements. Neither they nor their
family had communicated with the homestay families prior
to their arrival in Canada. All three girls' homestay families had answered
newspaper
ads offering
cash for housing
Japanese students.
How many people would send money and make plans to stay in a hotel that they
knew nothing about? How many parents would trust their children to live with
complete strangers? Even though this sounds
ludicrous, many know nothing about where or whom they will stay with.
I believe that most homestay experiences are wonderful and most host families
sincerely want to create a rich and enjoyable environment for their guests. But
there will always be exceptions.
I would recommend that anyone planning on a homestay program make contact
with the families. If you are going through a broker, ask how they screen their
familes and what services they provide if the homestay doesn't
work out. Communicating with the host families by phone, fax or e-mail will
help you assess
what type of situation you are entering and build a friendship and relationship
with the family.
By the way, our bus-stop girl ended
up staying
with my sister's family and she had a wonderful experience this time. It was I
and my family who shed
tears as we hugged her and said goodbye.