I went to Columbus yesterday to hang out with my cousin Blair, and on the drive there, I went by an Amish store. Since I'm still thinking about packing 99% of the time, I thought it might be a good idea to stop by on the way back to get some candies and things as housewarming gifts for my host family. Call me old fashioned, but I'm not crashing at someone's place for three months without a little something to make a good first impression.
I like taking Amish things as gifts because they're regional and because it's fun to explain Amish-ness, especially to New Yorkers and LAers (shoutout to Leslie). I took Amish hard candies to Italy for my language partner, and we had a really hilarious conversation in broken Italian about what exactly a horse and buggy was. I think I translated "buggy" as "insect-y" at first, but with a sketchpad and pencil, we figured it out eventually.
After I drove past the store, though, I started thinking about explaining the Amish to the Beninese in French, which was confusing -- French isn't coming any easier to me just yet. I was mentally wrestling with the verb conjugations for "to have" when I realized something: The Beninese people will not be impressed by the Amish. The Amish live without electricity? Great, so does most of the Beninese population. They don't own cars? Neither do we.
There are differences, obviously -- the Amish choose their lifestyle because of their religion and culture, whereas the Beninese just don't have the resources to access air conditioning and refrigerators, for example -- but the thought still kind of surprised me. People in my hometown see the Amish as a kind of quaint but wacky subculture -- good for tourism, but why in the world would you not use a dishwasher? But to the Beninese, non-electricity-using houses are way more of the norm, computers are still fairly confusing, and all-in-all, the Amish lifestyle doesn't seem all that surprising.
Basically, I'm going to need better host gifts.
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