Getting Cozy Here

Where my Peace Corps cluster trains, the grass is patched across the playground like stains on a carpet. The paint is chipped and the gutters spill over. We suck in the unfinished sewer system. Boys and girls skip and jump over garbage that is their playing field. In the U.S. many assume that inside the homes of Hunter’s Point, San Francisco, the living rooms are just as unaesthetic as the splintered, littered front porches. But here the homes are displayed with ceramic plates and cups, glazed armoire and bright red Azerbaijani carpets. In every house a chandelier dangles in the family room.
My host family’s unit is in a four-building apartment complex. There are five people who live here, and I have one of the two rooms. There is a living room and a small bathroom, which is tiled and only stinks of sewage sometimes. The kitchen is cozy, but has enough room for Ana (Mom) to lay ingredients around for fresh bread. The entire apartment is about the size of mine in San Francisco, but it holds triple the amount of people. After my second night I asked Narin if she would like to stay with me in my room to conserve the space we share. She translated this to her mother, to which she responded: “We used to share our home with two other families. We only had one room for ourselves. When the Soviet Union fell the government gave us this entire house. We welcome you.”