Meet Marisa, a host mom of 100 YFU people!
Meet Marisa, also known by the nickname Mamarisa, an Argentinian YFU volunteer with record numbers in hosting YFU students, volunteers and interns.
Since starting volunteering in YFU in 2015, Marisa has hosted 100 people!
From the beginning, Marisa has had a special book where she writes the names and numbers of students, interns and volunteers that she has hosted. Usually they stay from a full ten-month exchange to half a year, and sometimes also shorter periods from a few weeks to a month. Marisa often takes in students who need a place to stay in-between family changes, or who need a place to stay when waiting to travel out of the country.
Since Marisa only started hosting in 2015, she must have had many people staying at her house at the same time to reach a hundred. She often has multiple people in her big house. The arrangement works especially well with interns, because they often travel a lot around the country doing school presentations and Coloured Glasses workshops. Recently Marisa had three interns at the same time: Defne and Nur from Turkiye and Maija from Finland. She loves when there is life in her house.
“Once there was a training at the YFU office and I had agreed to host three people arriving from another province. Then, there were four after all. We settled them so that there were three on a big sofa and one in another bed. I went to sleep… and when I woke up in the morning, there was yet ANOTHER (a fifth person) staying over! There had been a fire in their friend’s apartment, and this friend had put a message to a YFU chat. The volunteers staying at my my place had answered “Come here, Marisa will not have a problem with that!”, she tells.
"I got involved with YFU in 2015 when I was on holiday in Tucumán. A friend who was a YFU volunteer invited me to go to a YFU event with her. I didn’t know much anything about YFU then, and didn’t really ask either.” But Marisa remembers liking the idea of showing her culture and learning about other cultures in return.
Marisa has been working in an office for 28 years. Besides YFU her hobby is photography - she takes a lot of photos.
When she was young, she had no opportunities to go abroad. It was only 15 years ago when she got the opportunity to leave her country and travel to South Africa to study English on a course. There she met people from all over the world, too. She made a friend from South Korea who later came to Argentina to visit her, which was was lovely. That was the beginning of her international experiences.
“I am doing this because I love the way we share our cultures. Last Christmas I was hosting with a 20-year-old girl from Türkiye for whom it was the very first Christmas of her life. It was such an interesting experience. YFU can be difficult to understand if you haven’t done it. We always say, YFU is a feeling. Why are you hosting? Because you love it. We know it is a feeling. I love it!”
Over the years, being a host mother has become a huge part of Marisa and her family's life. “They give me love, and I give them love too. They call me mom and I think of them as my kids."
"I actually have a tattoo of yfu and the hosting logo, the house. I show everyone, everybody, that I am a host mom, as you can see. What is it, people ask me. “I love YFU and you should know about YFU too.”
When asked about the everyday life of a host mom, Marisa has a concrete example to share: "Here in Argentina when you enter a house you keep your shoes on. I had a girl from Austria who always left her shoes outside. I asked her what she was doing… and now I also have a no-shoe policy inside. Many who come stay at my house now say “hey, this is my culture!” when they see the shoes outside", she explains.
Marisa says she's not a great cook, but her visitors often are. They share the cooking tasks and listen to music together. She loves to introduce others to rock nacional, the genre of Argentinian rock music. They also sing a lot in the house.
“Of course there are many cultural differences. In Europe people eat dinner at six, seven PM. Here in Argentina we have coffee at 6 PM and eat dinner at 10 PM. That’s something most of them are always shocked about. Yes, because it’s not an hour or two, it’s four hours of difference! They will for sure get a coffee or mate, but at 6pm we’ll be out walking or something!”
She tells the story of an intern from Austria, who later attended the Science Po University in Paris. There, she brought mate drink with her to her classes. “It's fun to think about her teaching Parisians how to drink mate properly, like I taught her. For example, people new to Argentina often say thank you, gracias, when receiving a cup of mate to drink. That’s not how we do it, we say thanks at the end when we’re done drinking.”