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Exchange student
lost 58 lbs. in Egypt
Host family Maine teen calls mean is accused of nearly starving him Tucson, Arizona | Published: http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/227302 HALLOWELL, Maine — Jonathan McCullum was in perfect health at 155 pounds when he left last summer to spend the school year as an exchange student in Egypt. But when he returned home to Maine just four months later, the 5-foot-9 teenager weighed a mere 97 pounds and was so weak that he struggled to carry his baggage or climb a flight of stairs. Doctors said he was at risk for a heart attack. McCullum says he was denied sufficient food while staying with a family of Coptic Christians, who fast for more than 200 days a year, a regimen unmatched by other Christians. But he doesn't view the experience as a culture clash. Rather, he said, it reflected mean and stingy treatment by his host family, whose broken English made it difficult to communicate. "The weight loss concerned me, but I wanted to stick out the whole year," he said in an interview at his family's home outside Augusta. Friends and teachers at his English-speaking school in Egypt urged him to change his host family, but he stayed put after being told the other home was in a dangerous neighborhood of Alexandria. After returning to the United States, he was hospitalized for nearly two weeks. The 17-year-old has regained about 20 pounds, but his parents said he's not the same boy he was when he left under the auspices of AFS Intercultural Programs. "He was outgoing, a straight-A student, very athletic. Now he's less spontaneous and more subdued," said his mother, Elizabeth McCullum, who was shocked when she met her son at the airport on Jan. 9 and saw he had lost one-third of his weight. Jonathan McCullum's parents said the exchange program should have warned them that students placed with Coptic families would be subject to dietary restrictions. Marlene Baker, communications director at AFS headquarters in New York, would not discuss McCullum's experience. She referred calls to the program's lawyer in Portland, Patricia Peard, who said she could not comment on McCullum's case because of the potential for a lawsuit. McCullum said his host family gave him only meager amounts of food, and his condition worsened during the last seven weeks, when the family observed a fast limiting the amount of animal protein he was given. The host family was a couple with two younger boys and a daughter who was in the United States on an AFS exchange. McCullum said the parents gave him the smallest food portions, hid treats in their bedroom and complained that the cost of his upkeep was more than they spent for their daughter when she was home. The host father, Shaker Hanna, rejected McCullum's story as "a lie," suggesting that he made it up because his parents were hoping to recover some of the money they paid for his stay as compensation. "The truth is, the boy we hosted for nearly six months was eating for an hour and a half at every meal. The amount of food he ate at each meal was equal to six people," Hanna said. He added that the boy was active, constantly exercising and playing sports. Hanna, an engineer, said his family went out of its way to prepare special foods, including fish and chicken, for McCullum during the fast periods. McCullum disputes that. The family served meat early in his stay, he said, but that ended during the fast period. He said he never got breakfast, and his first food of the day usually was a small piece of bread with cucumbers and cheese that he would take to school for lunch. There was a late-afternoon dinner consisting of beans, vegetables and sometimes fish, and a snack of bread later in the evening. AFS, a non-profit agency formerly known as American Field Service, is one of the largest and oldest organizers of student exchanges. |
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