I’ve been in site for a year on December 6 (wave your hands in the air!).

This experience keeps unfolding like backwards origami, or maybe like forwards origami (you know, the normal direction of origami). I digress: living here is rearranging my insides, which I didn’t realize could benefit tremendously from rearranging.

One notable difference between my culture (US American) and Guatemalan culture is the social rule of generosity. It’s a rule, not simply an abstract tenant, to treat others as you would want to be treated. Now, this doesn’t apply to every circumstance because every human construction (e.g. society) has it’s faults. But the art of giving courses through the marrow of Guatemala. My way of thinking has been challenged, day in and day out, by the art of generosity being creased and folded by the kind actions of friends and strangers alike.

As volunteer trainees, we were taught on week four that when you invite someone that means you are offering to pay. For example, if you say: “You wanna get ice cream?” and they say “Do you invite me?” and you wrinkle your nose in confusion and say: “Um yeah, sure, I invite you” that means that you just took on the bill. This gets complicated when you are one person and you want your whole host family to get ice cream with you.

In addition to the culture of inviting people, I am white. White people who come to Guatemala have a reputation of having money. Actually, globally, white people have a reputation of having money, or so I’ve come to understand. But when you’ve been a white person around mostly other white people for most of your life, you don’t sit around and think: “Oh, we are just positively swimming in money!” and lift your pinky finger into the air as you tilt back your teacup.

I was always familiar with the statistics of global wealth, of the comforts of my own country and my socioeconomic status, but all I ever paid attention to was what I saw more of, notably what people wealthier than me had. On the ladder of socioeconomic status, I always looked up at the people on higher rungs, I didn’t think to turn my palm downward to the people lower down on the ladder or simply empathize with their plight. I went on mission trips and donated money to non-profit organizations, sure, but when I considered my status I always squinted upwards toward the sun, narrowing my eyes to what I wanted. And that’s how I defined my status, against the Jones’s.

But a change in my environment tells a new story, and the pages I’ve flipped to loudly exclaim: “You have more. You are the Jones’s.” What is the source of such a belief? If I had to guess, the relationship history between my country and Central America has played a role in writing this story. If Guatemala and the US had a facebook page and you could click “Relationship History” the pictures that would emerge would include war, a civil conflict, exploitation of natural resources, eventual resolve, mission trips with US Americans lending a hand and resources and tourists traipsing through the lake towns with dreadlocks and 99 problems they left back in the US while the Guatemalans who need work try to cross the border to my country. There is no such Facebook account for entire countries, but I imagine that is because it’s not pleasant to acknowledge these moments. The privileged say: Better to let the truth sit somewhere in between the history books, in bundles of memory and pages stuck together by soot and rainfall; better to leave a history of tragedy somewhere in the past where social media can never access the images that tell a million stories.

It’s one thing to fetishize poverty and to understand it, to live it, to be surrounded by it. Far be it for me to say that, “YES, I understand poverty now. I am WOKE.” No, who would I be kidding? The change in my perspective consists in that I have more than my neighbors, friends and co-workers in terms of material wealth, and of this I am constantly reminded. How am I reminded? Every time I am asked how much my iPhone cost me, how much I paid for my flight to Guatemala, what my visa cost me to come to this country (answer: there is no visa. I can come and go as I please) or when I wince when they ask me how much I pay in rent for my spacious, 2-bedroom apartment that I have to myself, I feel the space between us.

And you know what has surged from this? Lots of guilt. And most of this guilt has been healthy guilt, not a guilt trip. But nevertheless I do straight up feel sorry for myself sometimes. I get tired of being called out for what I have, even though I think I don’t have money. I can tell you the humble amount of US dollars in my bank account and that my parents are flying me home for Christmas because I can’t afford it (and I’m 31, what excuse do I have?). But it’s not about that: there is a difference between potential wealth and kinetic wealth, and because I am a (white) US American, my potential wealth is myriad even if my kinetic wealth is modicum. My potential wealth is higher than theirs, it just is.

Meanwhile the mental list of Christmas requests is growing: big, red earrings for Profe Noel’s mom, a silver necklace for Gloria (nevermind that I do not own a silver necklace), a Hipster brand backpack for Profe Byron, gifts for my host family including a pair of Tweezerman tweezers, perfume-scented lotion, an iPhone for everyone in Santa Clara or an offer to sell them my iphone when I leave the country. Apparently, I’m supposed to leave them a ‘recuerdo’ when I finish my service and they, in kind, will give me a present. You can imagine how overwhelming that is to a person who has made an eternal habit of counting pennies. I was starting to regret being so social in my site as my list of recuerdos has grown so long.

Workwise, my time has recently been consumed with launching and preparing a camp for youth in my site. I’ve written the grant proposal (with the guidance of other volunteers, shout out to Tanya Smith-Sreen), revised the grant, maintained the camp agenda through it’s rounds of revisions, paid for the camp food out of my pocket as I wait for the grant money to come through and, the icing, begged the community to send their children to the (free) camp. Yes, I am amazing.

This is the state of mind I was in when I walked to the market with 2,000 quetzales in my bag, my Hipster brand backpack weighing on my shoulders thanks to the weight of my Mac computer and charger, the bright sun of Santa Clara wrinkling the skin around my eyeballs as I squinted my way to the center of town. It was market day, Saturday, so I cut around the muni to avoid the crowd. I had three important errands: first I had to go to the ecological park to confirm the space for the camp, then I had to say goodbye to a volunteer on their last day in site, then I had to go to a concert in another town.

But before all that I had to get the money out of my bag. The trip to the park would only be an hour round-trip. Nevermind that after my visit to the park I waved over a truck full of watermelons, when they realized I was asking for a ‘jalon’ (a ride) instead of trying to buy watermelon, they left me in the dust calling out: “There’s no room!” We’re in Guatemala, ask anything with 4 wheels: there is always more room. Nevertheless, 10 minutes later a microbus passed and I rode back to Santa Clara crouched over and facing backwards. I said goodbye to the other volunteer leaving site. I was running around making last-minute invitations to the camp and begging more people to come with anticipating what loomed ahead: because the road between Santa Clara and San Juan was blocked due to construction, I would have to take a 75-minute bus ride, then a 20-minute bus ride and then a 40-minute boat ride to get to a town that’s normally 30 minutes from me.

This was a Saturday full of quehaceres/chores and nothing was in it for me (it felt like). But all I could think about was myself. As I walked to the market in my traje, indigenous ropa, with my money to pay the camp food, a man called me over. I knew he was going to ask me for money. He was in a wheelchair, missing both of his legs from his thighs down. I know the routine: on market day, the same people vociferate for money including a couple of kids who wheel one guy around with a dialysis bag and avocado wiped across his abdomen to show his illness.

The man in the wheelchair wore glasses and a ballcap. He sat in his wheelchair next to an ice cream cart and appeared to be talking to the folks around him. I was braced and ready: “Seño, ayúdeme con un quetzal.. no puedo trabajar y estoy herido” (Help me with one quetzal, I can’t work and I’m wounded.”

I was playing this script in my head when he said: “Ma’am” he pointed to me with resolve. “I want to invite you to an ice cream.”

I was so not expecting to hear this that I had to pause to reformulate my response.

He went on to explain: “Look, I am happy. I am healthy and I can buy you an ice cream and I would like to buy you one.”

I was, plainly, stunned. I was the one with 2 grand in my bag and he was the one treating me. I felt shocked, ashamed and still doubtful. Was he trapping me? Was this some plight to trick me into obliging me to give him money (a small, ugly voice asked)?

But he didn’t. The man with the ice cream cart scooped out a yellow-hued cream and stuck it to a cone, handing it to me. I thanked the man. He continued on, inviting me to his house in Chichicastenango some day. “Just tell me when you can come” he says.

I thank him again for my cone, and head off to pay for the camp food. He rolled by later, a young kid helping him back down over a curb, and I thanked him again. He said: “Did you like it?” And I said: “yes, thank you.”

It’s the Christmas season, and though I do not identify as religious, I felt like this man made me think of Jesus, giving me a love I didn’t deserve. I didn’t know I didn’t deserve it until he pulled me out of my self and invited me to ice cream, pulling me from my selfishness, self-absorption and general irritation at all the things being asked of me.

He invited me.