Once in Vermont at the Baptist Church, we were taken to a house which was set up for retreats. Boys were placed in a big room full of beds and girls in another similar one. They had showers like the ones in my dorm in Georgia–one after the other separated by walls and only a plastic curtain covering the bench and clothes hooks.

We arrived near noon, and we were to be ready to go for dinner with different families that afternoon. Early in the afternoon one of the girls came to tell us that one of the African boys had come to the girls shower. So we went to investigate. The boy, who was a Zulu and at least 6 feet 6 inches tall and quite thin, explained with signs and gestures and colorful sounds like clicks, that the boy’s showers did not have any walls to separate them. He needed the privacy of the girl’s showers. We agreed to let him use the girl’s showers. What we did not know is that he was used to taking at least five showers a day. He suffered, he told us, of “body odor”.

That first afternoon we waited at the door of the church for our ride to dinner. A couple of other students and I were picked up by a nice man driving a beautiful black car that looked more like a limousine. It had large seats which were very comfortable and a glass separating the passengers from the driver, but he had the glass open. A teenager daughter was sitting next to him. She did not say a word, but the father chatted all the way to his house.

As soon as we arrived we were seated at a large table and had a good dinner with the family of four. The wife was quite reserved, as well as the teenage daughter and a boy around 10. After dessert the talkative host said he wanted to show us his business, and he took us down a hall behind the kitchen to his funeral parlor.

A body was on a table and several caskets were also on top of tables. He asked us if we were interested in seeing an embalming. He said he would understand if we were not. I had seen many autopsies when I was at Journalism School in Chile so, I and another boy from Spain accepted, and we both ended up with a stomach ache. The best part was the makeup of the face and hands. The rest of the procedure turned our stomachs. After all, it was just after dinner.

It was quite interesting to visit Dartmouth College and, of course, to be introduced to United States funerary traditions.