One of the first things I told my host mother in Ecuador was a lie. A small one, at the time—there was no way I could possibly have known then that over the next few months, it would completely take on a life of its own. But even now, if I could go back in time, I think I might choose to tell it over again.

My host mother was nothing if not welcoming, and treated me like family from the very beginning. She taught me to make empanadas, made me breakfast every morning, and laughed gently when my host sisters teased me at the dinner table. She loved flowers, her family, music, and God.

The lie I told her that first day was a simple one, and one that my program directors had actually encouraged. Assuming that she would be Catholic, like most Ecuadorians, I told her that my family was Protestant—technically the truth, although the last one of us to actually go to church was my late grandmother. Unfortunately, my host family was not only not Catholic, but in fact part of a small but deeply conservative evangelical Protestant church. From that moment on, they assumed that my religious views would be fundamentally the same as theirs, and as the weeks and months passed, my small white lie grew out of control.

I arrived in Ecuador only a few months after coming out as a lesbian to my friends and family, and I knew from the beginning that it would be different. I grew up in a liberal east coast city and then ended up at Smith College—of course I was aware that I was coming out in one of the safest and most accepting environments possible. I never assumed that Quito would be the same as Northampton. But I was entirely unprepared for the amount of homophobia I’d be exposed to in the safety of my own (temporary) home.

“It’s not my place to tell others what to do with their lives, but I would never let any of those people into my home,” my host mother said to me—not just once, but repeatedly, as casually as if she were discussing the weather. “Homosexuals, lesbians, the transgenders…out there in the street they can do what they want, but this is a house of God.”

Once, in front of a friend from my program who I had invited over for lunch, she continued: “Those nice people from the program, who pick the host families, they know that I would not take in a gay or a lesbian. And if they sent me one, I’d send them right back.”

My friend glanced at me across the table, and I fought back the hysterical urge to laugh, or maybe cry. Not for the first time and not for the last, I said nothing.

During my two months with my host family, I thought a lot about how easy it would be to leave—my program would help me switch homestays without question, if I asked. And I thought about how lucky I was to have that option, and about the millions of people across the world who don’t. I thought about taking a stand, about coming out to her right before I was scheduled to leave—maybe having known me for two months, having taken me in and treated me like family, would help to challenge her prejudices. Maybe I could make a difference.

I never did any of those things. Even knowing as I left the country that I might never be back, even knowing that I would likely never see her again, I kept quiet. I don’t know how to explain how much I felt like an imposter in my host family, and how much I loved them anyway. I loved our dinners together and our Saturday night movie marathons, our little house by the park and the sound of my host sister practicing violin late at night. As happy as I am to be back home, I miss them every day.

I don’t know if this story has a resolution, or if it ever will, and maybe that’s as it should be. After my semester in Ecuador, I’m more certain than ever before that I’m not certain about anything—where my comfort zones are, what it means to be safe, what it means to be open, and what it means to be home.

 

Kaia Heimer-Bumstead is a junior majoring in Comparative Literature and planning on adding a second major in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies. She spent the Fall 2017 semester studying the politics of language and researching indigenous literature in Ecuador.

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