Part II Day 71: May 1, 2010 (tagging household items, a partial home tour of the poor, and lunch in Eritrea)

Position: Volunteer

Number of Days Officially Unemployed: 106

Hours Volunteered: 2

EDD Check: $250 per week

When Etel and I arrive at the Bhutanese family's house, they already have the quilt we used last week to sit on laid out across the floor. The oldest daughter enters from the back room, walks into the kitchen, then presents us with a tray containing two mismatched coffee cups of warm rice milk. It's delicious, something like warm horchata, minus the cinnamon.

I ask to use the bathroom, and this is the first time I see any part of the house other than the front room. The bathtub is home to large plastic containers filled with wet clothes, which, I assume, means they've been doing their laundry in here. A small cup sitting on the old sink holds the family's toothbrushes, which are well-used and worn out. While we're mostly here to tutor the family in English, seeing objects like the frayed toothbrushes makes me want to share what I have, to use my own money to buy new toothbrushes, but I don't know what the protocol is for such a gesture.

When I come out of the bathroom, we jump right into the first activity, which is having the family members––except grandma, who watches from her perch on the couch––write down the household item words they know on Post-It notes and stick them to the item. For one of his turns, the dad writes "soup" and then walks off into the back of the house. Later, the younger daughter brings out a bar of soap on which the dad placed the "soup" Post-It. I explain the mistake, and now it's the daughter's turn to disappear into the back bedrooms. She returns with an unopened instant Ramen noodles in a Styrofoam cup. "Yes, that's it," I say, and we show her dad. The Post-It note idea is a hit, and by the time we're done the T.V., radio, couch, oven, walls, and several other things, including the soap and soup, have been tagged.

For the second activity, Etel works with the children using the portable dictionaries we bought them, and I sit with the parents at the kitchen table having them draw small pictures of household items I name. We use the pictures to play a form of bingo where I describe an item and tell them a number, and they have to put the drawing on the bingo space with the corresponding number. While we're doing this activity, I notice a small cockroach crawling on the wall. Then, another one, followed by two, ant-sized, baby cockroaches. My instinct is to smash them, but, like the parents, I ignore them and continue with the activity. The family doesn't seem to share our same abhorrence of cockroaches, because a few weeks ago the kids asked Etel what cockroaches were, and when she pointed out one on the wall by the T.V., the kids shrugged and said, "Oh," like their familiarity made them friendly.

At one point today, I'm trying to explain the difference between the oven and the stovetop, that there are two words for these different sections of the oven, so I walk the parents over into the kitchen. They stare at me blankly, then smile. I open the oven and pretend to put something inside. "For cooking food," I say. "Hot." The mother nods and smiles some more, and I notice that spiderwebs span from the oven door to inside the oven. They obviously aren't using the oven.

I move on to the stovetop, where an empty, dented green pot sits with the residue from our warm rice milk. I point to it and say "pot." Next to it is a pressure cooker, which I also simplify to "pot." Sitting on the counter is the most used item in the house, where they do most of their food preparation: the rice cooker. Between the rice cooker and the refrigerator, a microwave sits unplugged. The couple knows to say "micro" to describe the microwave, so I have them write out "microwave oven" on Post-Its and put them on the appliance.

Before we leave, the oldest daughter tries to give us the usual Cokes, but we thank her and say we're fine with the rice milk. She seems confused and leaves one of the two Cokes for us. When we're all done, I put the Coke in the fridge, where a handful of vegetables and a semi-wilted bunch of lettuce sit among the empty shelves. Since I did a quick, impromptu lesson with the younger daughter earlier, describing the difference between the refrigerator part of the fridge and the freezer, I know the freezer contains only two miniature, frozen chickens and a tray of ice cubes. Again, I think how strange this world must seem to the refugees––the freezer, the oven, the microwave––and how crappy it must be to have no means for making a living, to completely rely on the kindness of strangers. But there's also something appealing to me about the simplicity of their diet, since I've spent my own time eating an oats-rice–salad daily meal routine, have given up on microwaves (not necessarily by choice, but I don't miss it), and I'm more horrified by overstuffed fridges than sparse ones.

After we leave and are driving back toward University Heights, we decide to stop and eat at an East African restaurant Etel's been wanting to try. It's called Asmara Eritrean Restaurant, and the food is from the little-talked-about country of Eritrea, which is sandwiched between Ethiopia and Sudan. Similar to Ethiopian fare, the veggie sampler platter is served in small mounds of different items––"lentils cooked with onions, tomatoes and hot peppers, a tumeric-scented cabbage, a carrot-and-potato mixture, and a velvety stew of collard greens and spinach"––on a large, spongy, and mostly flavorless, pancake bread. You can read an accurate review about the place in this San Diego CityBeat review. Etel and I sip Ethiopian beers (they were out of the Asmara beer from Eritrea––the server/owner said it's hard to get) and snack on the sambusas, spicy "triangles of flaky pastry that hold a lentil, onion and jalapeño filling," while three white women, who speak in San Diego-ease ("totally") and have adopted African children, sit at a nearby table and say borderline offensive things to their one-year-olds, such as, "Does this smell remind you of home?" making me wonder if the adopting of African-children-trend started by Angelina Jolie and Madonna is more helpful or harmful for the kids.

Etel and I talk about a possible move to New York City and what that would mean for us. Thinking about all the interesting places there are to eat and see in New York, Etel comments on our recent rash of San Diego adventures, saying, "I've never had so many stimulating experiences like I've had lately with you." She knows I'm down for anything, and I love that she it, too. Yes, New York might fit us just fine.