Increasing Confusion.

Although I learn new things every day I am here, I also feel that I know less each day. It has to do with looking more deeply into something I thought I had understood, and realizing that even the roots of my assumptions about people and culture were probably wrong.

Par example, for the last two nights my twelve year old brother, Abdou, has been showing me photographs of the family. He showed me a picture of a young girl; she seemed about 8 or 9. Abdou introduced her as "my little sister, Mariam," and moments later, my father referred to "his daughter, Mariam" in passing. Before that moment, I had heard no mention of even Mariam's name. Where is this little girl? Why does she not live with us? Obviously, my brain was flooded with questions, and the assumption that I had begun to understand the dynamics of my homestay family was toppled.

To even further confuse matters, Abdou showed me a photograph of my sister Maty sitting with my aunt and uncle. In his running, rapidly-spoken narration, Abdou said, "Here's Maty avec her parents." Her parents? Maty has always been introduced to me as my sister!

My current status: thoroughly bewildered, and brain-storming the most tactful way to ask these very necessary and very belated questions.