Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Mi casa es su casa

Our house is one of the popular hang-outs for kids in our neighbourhood. Kids love to come to our house to play games, to have talent shows or fashion shows (fashion meaning they try on our hats!) to wrestle or just fall over giggling. I want to be honest, so I will admit that sometimes we lock ourselves into our house, stay really quiet and pretend we're not home. Introverts like my husband need some privacy! But usually we love having the kids over.

In our living room we have a big collage of photos on the wall. There are photos of friends and family in Canada as well as friends in Zimbabwe. And the first thing any visitor to our home does is stare at the wall. Of course they try to find themselves first, and then they look at the other photos. The kids love looking at the photos, and naming all of their friends, and their friends' parents on the wall. I realized yesterday that this may be one of the reasons that they feel so comfortable in our house. They see their faces on our wall, and so maybe they think that this is their home too. Which it is, right? In the West we have this "my home is my castle and my private area" mentality which is very, very foreign here. I guess it's something we all have to figure out - how to make our homes a welcome and a refuge for people. For us - we just put our smiling friends and family on the wall! What do you do?

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