Opinion

Avoiding homestay horrors

By JohnGathright

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.

Shukan ST: Sept. 7, 2001

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