Ellen and Tom Simmonds have been staying with families around the world for much of the last 15 years as well as hosting foreign travelers in their Rye, N.H., home.
"When we went to Japan, people would hug each other, and our Japanese host, Agie, said to me, 'Agie, no hug,' " Ellen Simmonds recalls. "He was a big Japanese man, tall and muscular. I said, 'Fine, OK.' When we left, he came to me and said, 'Agie will hug.' That's what happens."
Such human connection is at the heart of many homestay programs, which provide an excellent way for single travelers, and others, to surround themselves with friendly, local people. The programs can be a loose network like Servas, where travelers are handed a list of hosts in various countries and make their own arrangements for a visit, or something more structured, like Friendship Force International, which arranges homestays for small groups, complete with group leader and organized activities.
Though such programs may differ in style, what most share is the idea of overcoming cultural stereotypes and building goodwill through person-to-person contact.
"It's friendship, the fellowship, the warmth," says Kate Soukonnikov, a Servas traveler who, with her husband, Boris, frequently hosts others in her Newton home. "Servas does build peace one friendship at a time."
As an example, she talks about having "a chip on my shoulder about Germans," as the Jewish daughter of a Holocaust survivor. "My husband would say you can't do that." Then they hosted a German actor and his wife who were traveling on their honeymoon, a "tall blond Aryan," as she puts it.
"They were very intelligent, both wonderful people," she recalls. "I talked about my background. He was in the kitchen doorway, chatting. His father was a German soldier, he said. The war had changed him forever; it was a nightmare for him. This German actor was a childhood survivor in his own way. And our eyes met across the kitchen. All that pain, all that horror of the war. Except for Servas this would never have happened.
"Not that it's always deep and meaningful," she says. A connection can be as simple as the one Boris Soukonnikov, who grew up in Ukraine, experienced with his host family in Japan. "They said, 'Do you know, Japan has a very popular folk song.' They found their song sheets, a Japanese translation of a Russian folk song, with music, and we sang it together. I said, 'I came from America to Japan to sing Russian folk songs.' "
That was his first stay with a family after years of traveling on his own. Now he's hooked.
"For me, it's much better than any other kind of trip," Soukonnikov says. "It helped to see life from inside. You see real life, not from a tourist's point of view."
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