Living with a Local
Here at West2East we love to talk about Turkey and Turkish peoples. Well, what is it like to live in Turkey with a Turk?
Over the last couple of years living in Turkey, I have had roommates from several different countries and cultures. What a privilege! I not only got to know these friends better but also got to see the beauty that their culture brings to a household.
Most of my thoughts about “living with a local” come from my last roommate. She is a university student who grew up in a small village in western Turkey. When the pandemic began, she went home but was unable to continue online education there, so she returned to Adana about a year ago. This is when we became roommates. She has taught me much about Turkish culture, greatly improved my Turkish and expanded my Turkish food cooking abilities. More than any of these she has become family to me which brings me to my first point about living with a local. Living with a local is like living with family.
We genuinely lived like family. We talked about what we were going to do during the day over breakfast and discussed life while making and having supper together in the evening. We made decisions together about shopping, cleaning, and plans for the week. Her friends became my friends and mine hers. We hosted people over together. The key word here is together.
I come from a culture that emphasizes the individual. Turkish culture highly emphasizes community. Thanks to her I have begun thinking less in terms of my things, my home, and my schedule. I want to continue to grow in thinking in terms of our time, our space, and our preferences with whoever I am doing life with or hosting.
As we lived together, another thing I learned about living with a local is that there is never an empty home. We constantly had the opportunity to have neighbors and friends over to our home. Some people came for coffee or a meal, and some came to stay for a week or two. Turks are remarkably hospitable. Living with one means having an open-door policy, an endless supply of coffee and tea available to serve and enough space at the front door to gather the shoes of all the guests. Turks do not wear their shoes in the home to keep the home clean.
Turks are clean. I must admit that my home remained cleaner while living with a local. Whereas most locals clean their home every day, we compromised with once a week and for guests, which meant every couple of days. We learned to compromise and to communicate. Another difference between our cultures is communication style. My culture tends to communicate directly whereas hers is indirect. We quickly learned that to live together we had to communicate well so she learned to be more direct, and I am learning the art or indirect communication.
Living with a local has meant family vibes, a full and clean home, an enrichment of life and change of my household culture in a beautiful way. I am thankful to have had the opportunity to live a local.
To our friends in the West, keep looking East!
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Rebekah Harper
Rebekah loves claiming Birmingham, Alabama as her hometown, though she has learned that home can be anywhere. With half of her life spent in North Africa and Europe and the other half on the West Coast (USA), it can be said that she has grown adept at fitting in everywhere but belonging to nowhere. However, over the past couple of years Turkey has captivated her attention. She loves the adventure of exploring new places but even more so the people and stories she has come to cherish along the way.