Why I Choose to Live in a Trailer Home

Why would I, as a 29 year old retired engineer/missionary to India choose to live in a trailer park with 700 Mexican immigrants?  Good question, thank you for asking.  Given the choice between a big lake-house with a boat dock and manicured lawn or a dilapidated trailer in a claustrophobic trailer park, which would you choose?  Yeah, me too.  I'll take the trailer every time.  One our first days coming to see the trailer before we moved in, my roommate Drea met one of the neighbors, Carlos.  After a short conversation he looked at her with a kind of awkward expression on his face and said, "um, so this neighborhood is preddy much all Latino."  "Yeah I know," she responded with a smile.

Last night we hosted a house-warming party.  We had over a hundred people show up.  It was raining so you can imagine the kind of overwhelming amount of personal space invasion that was happening in our double-wide.  It was a mix of white privileged 20-somethings, middle aged stay-at-home Mexican moms, and wild middle-schoolers.  It was a party to remember.  At one point I was wedged between a few people, waiting for space to grab some nachos, and I saw right in the middle of everything, with blaring music and nay-nay dancing on one side and hordes of people shouting over the noise to have a conversation on the other side, one of my co-workers with her hand on an older lady's shoulder, her eyes shut tight in prayer.  This is the kind of beautiful thing that can happen when two cultures clash. 

Drea excited to move in

It's awkward when people don't obey the unspoken social norms.  In a small lake-town in Georgia white people generally live in large, spaced out double-story homes with beautiful trees separating them from their neighbors, and brown people live hidden in trailer courts and working in chicken factories.  Most people probably don't even know that hardly any of the people from the trailer homes will graduate from their segregated high schools; or that 700 people live in a 160-trailer community.  Alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, and hopelessness run rampant.  So when some of those white hipsters move into a trailer park it gets awkward for everyone.  Things can't change as long as they are ignored. 

Housewarming party

Do we really believe that all were created equal?  Do we really believe that race has no bearing on worth?  Do we really believe that our identity is unrelated to our material possessions and personal level of comfort?  Then why are we so segregated?  Shouldn't the fact that rent is cheaper be enough motivation to live in a trailer home?  Or the potential to have interesting conversations with people of a different culture?  Or to be able to help out a couple middle-aged moms with their English lessons?  I think those are all great reasons to move into a trailer park.  I moved here to play tag with Junior and shake hands with Carlos.