Week One: An Unexpected Visitor

I want to talk a little bit about culture. I feel the need to vent.

I’ve told you about the many guests we had in our house in week one. But I left one out. A very unexpected one. We were finally alone in the house for the first time. It was nighttime, not terribly late, maybe like 7:30 or 8:00. We had already finished dinner and cleaned up the house. So, naturally, as one might assume a newlywed couple might do on their first night alone together, we decided to spend the rest of the evening together, alone, and hopefully somewhat romantically. I decided to put on something appropriate for the occasion, and Jairo hung up a blanket where a curtain should go in our room because we don’t have curtains yet, and didn’t really feel like sharing our evening with the neighborhood.

Everything was going well until we hear a knock at the door. Was that our door? We listened again. Yes, it was definitely our door. Ok. Panic. What were we going to do? I didn’t have any extra clothes, a robe, nothing. We just stared at each other blankly, hoping that whoever it was would just go away. All of the sudden someone knocked on our bedroom window. We both looked at each other with a face that said, “Are you kidding me?” The knocking continued. Obviously they weren’t going to buy that we weren’t home.

Jairo told me to just stay put; it was probably just our friend who lives next door. He left, and I locked the door and listened as he went to see who it was. Soon enough I heard him inviting in the pastor of our church. Yeah. Our pastor! Who, by the way, knows that we are on our “honey moon”.

Jairo showed him to the table and then brought me some clothes to change into. I changed as quickly as possible, trying my best to look presentable. In Ecuador when someone comes over you always serve them something; coffee, tea, whatever you have. So I greeted the pastor and instantly went to work in the kitchen to make tea, which I served with bread and cheese, a fairly typical evening food to serve here.

It turns out there was no real reason for the visit, he was just “in the neighborhood” and wanted to stop by. On my honeymoon. He stayed for over an hour making small talk, and then went home. I was completely dumbfounded. Jairo, although annoyed, had a precedent for this sort of thing, because he’s Ecuadorian, and apparently dropping in unannounced is fairly common practice here.

So I weighed both sides in my head. My American upbringing teaches me that, although an amusing story to tell later, this was completely inappropriate, intrusive behavior. However, my Ecuadorian surroundings tell me that a good person is a person who always opens their home to anyone, anytime. And the more I think about it, the more I think that both sides have merit. In the US, I show my respect for people by making sure it’s ok if I come over before I drop by. I don’t know if they are home, sleeping, sick, busy, or maybe don’t have food in the house to feed me with. But in Ecuador I show my respect for people by welcoming them and making them feel good while they are in my house, even if it means giving them the bread I was going to eat for breakfast tomorrow or the last thing that’s in my fridge. I don’t really think one is better than the other. But I think a hybrid of the two is better than just one of them. And that’s what’s really cool about marrying someone from another culture. Maybe you fight more and you understand each other less than the average newlyweds, but you also get to have a much more complete, interesting view of the world, and the opportunity to adopt traditions and customs that are new to you which make your life more interesting.