Conversations During my Spring Break

Everyone at work: Why are you back?

Me: Spring Break.

Everyone: Why aren't you off somewhere fabulous and warm?

Me: I spent all my money abroad last semester.

Everyone: Oh really? Where did you go?

Me: Egypt.

Everyone: Did you hear about the kid in Alexandria who lost 1/3 of his body weight?

Me: Yes...

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This story is so weird I wasn’t even sure how to address it when my dad first sent me the link above. To be perfectly honest, I’d hoped to avoid talking about it on this website, period – but the number of conversations I’ve had in the past two days about this story have convinced me that there is a desperate need to reassess what went wrong here. I’m certainly not trying to downplay the severity of the situation, particularly for this kid, Jonathan McCullum, who is undoubtedly going to face a host of health complications as a result of this. Rather, I think that jumping to pin the blame on his host family – or even AFS, the organization that coordinated his abroad program – is really just diverting a lot of responsibility from those who should have been primarily responsible for Jonathan’s health; namely, he and his parents.

What are we teaching our kids?

The line that stood out to me when I first read this article concerned how Jonathan was “reduced to stealing [food] from a supermarket” due to his host family’s refusal (inability?) to provide adequate meals. Stealing food from an Egyptian supermarket. This kid would make Kenneth Lay proud. As best I can tell from the article, Jonathan McCullum was in Alexandria at approximately the same time I was in Cairo. During that time, the exchange rate was floating in between 5.5 LE/USD and 5 LE/USD, with the declining dollar coming into play during my last few weeks in late November and early December.

Now, I obviously have no idea what kind of circumstances this kid is coming from in the U.S., but the fact is that compared to the cost of living in America, even with our economy tanking, Egypt is dirt cheap. Depending on your preference, a filling lunch might cost anywhere from 1 LE to 3 LE – provided, of course, that you’re willing to limit yourself to a foul, ta’amiyya or shwarma at street stands or one of the tourist-oriented chain restaurants (Gad or Filfila – both of which are in Alexandria). The American chains will run you more, about the same as in the U.S. Did he really not have a dollar every day to go get a sandwich, or any kind of snack, after school? And if he didn’t, why not? Because Mom and Dad couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give it to him? What business does a seventeen-year-old kid have going to a foreign country without some extra money for emergencies – like staving off potentially deadly weight loss?

Various versions of the AP report have suggested a number of reasons why Jonathan didn’t bring his parents, teachers, or program administrators in to help him: AFS “discouraged” participants from communicating with their families to encourage full cultural immersion; a potential alternate host family was located in a dangerous part of town; he wished to finish out the program; he suffered from Stockholm syndrome. To put it bluntly, I think this is all a ton of zift; I get the clear impression from the article that although Jonathan was uncomfortable in his homestay, he ultimately and consciously chose – for whatever reason – to not pursue means to change that situation. Whether this was out of pride, fear, or sheer idiocy, the fact is that living thousands of miles from home, surrounded by near-strangers, Jonathan McCullum was the only one who could accept full responsibility for his living situation and his health – and he didn’t.

Do you know where your [emaciated] child is?

And what were Mom and Dad doing during this time? Except for hurling accusations after their son’s return to the United States, Jonthan McCullum’s parents are conspicuously absent from this entire narrative. My mother (hi Mom, I love you) would have been on her high horse in three seconds flat if I had emailed her to say that AUC wasn’t feeding me properly. (In my imagination, it would have been the first time in history someone didn’t get put on hold by the New York office.) Not all parents are my own mother, but with indications that there might be problems with their teenage son’s host family, why did Jonathan’s parents not press him for details, provide support, or contact the program on his behalf? When they learned of his weight loss while he was still abroad, as the AP article suggests they did, why did they not contact him about the problem and discuss their son’s options? If this was a lesson in self-sufficiency, I think they got a little bit more than they bargained for.

And it’s not just the parents’ behavior that confounds me, but AFS as well. My knowledge of AFS is not intimate, but I am independently familiar with them as one of the most well-respected study abroad organizations in the country, and I cannot help but question whether information about the role AFS played in this is being withheld, either by this family or by the organization’s legal counsel. That an American high school student with no discernable Arabic language skills would be placed in a homestay situation without any in-country support seems preposterous, and I hardly think that AFS would have built the reputation it has through hare-brained schemes such as this. To the best of my knowledge, none of my friends who have participated in foreign homestays did so through AFS programs; nonetheless, in all of those cases, administrative oversight of the homestay situation was touted. In the one situation I know of where the homestay was a poor fit, the student was quickly placed with a new family.

So why wasn’t that the case here? The AP report indicates that Jonathan had spoken with his parents and teachers about finding a new host family, but what about his program representatives? If there were none to advocate on his behalf, why was this the case?

The Heavy Truth.

For those who aren’t accustomed to dietary restrictions – as it’s fair to presume Jonathan McCullum wasn’t – fasting is painful. Like running as fast as you can, repeatedly, into a wall. Because where some people might see the face of Jesus in the brick, you thought you saw a sandwich. It totally messes with your metabolism, and while it probably wouldn’t be the case for a foreigner, fasting and eating “like an Egyptian” typically leads to weight gain as a result of post-sunset gorging (especially during Ramadan). Bodies change as a result of stress and dramatic lifestyle changes, especially where weight is concerned – and going from being a teenage boy in America to a foreign exchange student in Egypt is almost as different as it could get. An American accustomed to American dining habits – fare, frequency and portions – cannot possibly maintain body weight while eating “like an Egyptian” – which of course is not to say that losing 1/3 of his body weight and seriously endangering his health was the inevitable result of Jonathan McCullum’s foreign adventure.

I think that what this really drives home is exactly what I chided someone on the AUC Study Abroad Facebook group about a few weeks ago: Egypt is not America. Get over it. Living as an exchange student in a foreign country is a privilege; use of the term “host” to describe the people who take you in, whether there are 7 or 17 million of them, is hardly an accident. But in the end, if you’re really going to not just survive, but thrive, in a new environment – whether it’s abroad or in the U.S. – you have to be willing to pony up the responsibility for your own situation. I can’t tell you how often I stood on the corner across from Greek Campus, waiting for the eternally-delayed Kanzy shuttle bus, and how much English-language griping there was over that shuttle. Well, okay, so it’s late. Late again. What are we going to do about it? Complain to Dahlia for the umpteenth time? Take the Metro? Take a cab? No? Then quit complaining. Let’s conjugate some verbs. Mmm, Form X.

When I read this article, responsibility is the number one thing that’s missing; the McCullums blame AFS and the host family, AFS and the host family blame the McCullums, and all the while the American media is having a field day and leading people to ask me how much weight I lost in Cairo, instead of what I gained while I was there.