I’m a long-term foreigner with an expiration date.

The following terms don’t quite apply: transplant, resident or visitor. Each of those has a defining set of circumstances that doesn’t fit that of a Peace Corps Volunteer.

‘Volunteer’ has complications too as it implies that I am not paid. I do get paid, it’s just that the money is worth very little in USD. That’s why the US uses the term Volunteer.

But the term ‘Voluntario’ doesn’t work as well in Guatemala. ‘Volunteer’ in Guatemala is often coupled with Firefighter. Voluntarios Bomberos. That’s because there is no funding for Firefighters in Guatemala apart from fundraising. So the firefighters stand on speed bumps to collect donations in repurposed tins (in the cities). In the campo we don’t… have… firefighters. So it’s good that there is rain and not much heat. I think the closest firefighters are 1 hour away.

But I realize when I meet people from the States, traveling or working here, I occupy an awkward middle space between visitor and resident.

I met a couple en route to to the airport in March. We were on a private shuttle together (10 dollars or 80 quetzales). With the couple were two young girls, one sitting next to her dad and the other next to her mom, on two separate rows. And I sized up the young couple by thin slicing (it’s a term to describe how we make snap judgments in first impressions, check it out).

I decided they were young parents congratulating themselves for coming to a developing country with 2 young children, they probably swiped their ‘woke’ card at the gate. Hell, I swipe my woke card whenever possible and I’m sure that makes me less woke. Moving on: I had just been exasperated by the tone of the woman in charge of the shuttle. I thought we were on Chapín (Guatemalan) time and I was walking from a neighboring town, I got lost as google took me to a faulty address, two of the three numbers on my voucher were NOT active numbers.. But I did make it and I still only harbor a miniature suitcase-size of dislike against the shuttle woman who rudely called me “Niña” on the phone. She called me Little Girl! Grudge-holding, an unfortunate pastime of mine. And so I told the couple: “I’ve never been spoken to that way in this country!” and we got to chatting.

I had them sized-up as the following: “Trying to be adventurous, Wanted a Cheap Vacation, Wanted to ‘Culturalize’ Their Children by Proximity and Wanted to Prove To The World and Themselves That They Did Not Vote For Trump By Visiting The Other Side of the Proposed Wall” Travelers to Guatemala. These were all of the things I assumed. Even though my list is smarmy, TBH/To Be Honest I wasn’t that far off. What I did not anticipate is that they used to work and live in Guatemala and were back on a visit.

Now this did not remove the divide between us (that I felt in my mind), it actually heightened it in other ways. The Great Wall of China was between us when I thought they were first-time tourists. But when I learned that they were visiting Antigua where they used to work, the divide converted to Berlin Wall size (almost 12 feet high, too high for gymnasts to jump but still not Great Wall of China dimensions). Did you ever consider that The Great Wall of China is not the original name of the monument, that it probably has a Chinese name that we cannot pronounce? The Great Wall of China is more than 13,000 miles long. I never, ever knew that.

But this Berlin Wall-sized divide was one I erected between us because of the difference between their experience living in Guatemala and mine. When they had told me the places in Guatemala that they had been, I knew that our experiences were worlds different. The greatest difference is this: I work with Indigenous communities and they worked only with Ladinos (latino in Spanish). This implies entirely different lifestyles, education levels, the presence of a Mayan dialect and the work environment. I really liked them: she explained that she teaches Spanish to students in an underprivileged public school zone in Green Bay, Massachusetts. She is teaching most of her students Spanish because, even though some of their parents are immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries, they have not learned or used Spanish. Their accents were Green Bay thick like the driving was abrupt, all of us rooting our weight firmly in our butts so we didn’t get flung from window to window. Their daughters were both entirely engrossed in screens the entire drive, tablets or iPhones or something kin. They hardly spoke at all, the future of my country.

Nevertheless, the husband and wife told me about their trip, their work in Antigua 7 years ago and their lives now. Our conversation drifted to privilege as White US Americans, Trump and the state of our nation. She explained the inherent awkwardness of being a non-native Spanish teacher teaching Spanish to students with parents who do speak it. I was grateful that she recognized her place in that: not being a native speaker but teaching the language. Someday that might be me and I want to recognize that I can’t be an ambassador for the language of Spanish like a native speaker can. He just got a job at the YMCA working with programming, and he mentioned Black Lives Matter. I shared how much my perspective has changed on my white privilege based on how non-white volunteers have been treated in country.

I had to keep my pride in check the entire conversation. Why am I concerned with walls and divides and noting the differences between people? Isn’t Peace Corps meant to build bridges, not barriers, especially between myself and my fellow US citizens? And yet I feel it. I told them: I am learning K’iche’. I live in a Mayan community, I wear traje. At the end of the day, I feel like I am descending from a gorgeous, far-off land where they still light candles when the power goes out (instead of reaching for phones), without a fridge, microwave, or internet and where hands do the work of machines. Working and living in Antigua is nothing like that.

The weirdest feeling is leaving Santa Clara and getting culture shock IN Guatemala. When I see the Guatemalan Peace Corps staff I get confused. Their Spanish is so much faster, more elevated (at times) than what I speak in Santa Clara and their socioeconomic status provides a different life. And in most of Guatemala, K’iche’ is not even spoken or understood. Speaking with people from the capital is like listening to someone play the banjo while trying to isolate each note.

This experience is so nuanced that it’s difficult to explain. I am not a world traveler. I am living here. It’s difficult to explain to Friends, Family, My Fellow Citizens and especially My Fellow Citizens visiting the USA.

And yet I have so much more to learn. While I think this experience has taught me how to identify the nuance of culture and not to put countries under one sticky label of packaging tape, I have a long way to go myself. I hope that I can remember that, especially when I sit next to idiots at Bar Airports who say ignorant things about people in Central America “They’re actually really clean people…” I wanted to slap the guy but he was buying me beer, and I don’t make a habit of slapping anyone.

Here are some interesting differences between myself and tourists:

The Way We Spend:

Quetzales (Guatemalan currency) solely fund my existence. USD (or another strong currency) funds traveler’s trips.

The money I get paid to live here is more than sufficient. I would never tell Guatemalans that because they assume that I am rolling in dough. Maybe I am. I say that with a laugh because of the balance in my US bank account. But I have learned that even if I don’t have money, I am not poor because I have access to people who would give me money and I could always be making more somewhere else. I have access to the potential of money, there are people who cannot say that. This is a result of privilege. Poverty and opportunity are at odds, which I think the developed world struggles to recognize. ‘Brokeness’ by choice (my current situation) is not the same as being poor and should not ever be conflated with poverty.

And while I make sufficient money for my rural lifestyle, there are a lot of activities in Guatemala that I cannot afford. The commercial and travel hubs in Guatemala are wildly expensive compared to rural areas, that’s why you see indigenous people selling in those areas but not often living in them. (I’m not equating poverty and Indigenous peoples, every circumstance is different). But when it comes to malnutrition and lack of education/illiteracy, many indigenous communities have these struggles. This doesn’t mean that they don’t work ANY HARDER than any other Guatemalan population, it might even mean that they have to work harder and earn less. But these are things I can’t speak on with ownership or certainty, simply my observation. I am meant to live on their level, not to live above it (even though the reality is that I am paid more than many of them). All that to say, I get sticker shock every time I am in Antigua. The tuk-tuks charge 10 quetzales a ride in Antigua, and 3 quetzales a ride in Santa Clara. But travelers have saved for this trip, and in a more hearty currency, and they are taking a vacation on the US Dollar or the Euro. I think in quetzales, they think in dollars. We are in different boats.

The Places We Go:

The travel restrictions for Peace Corps Volunteers is out-of-this-world strict. In fact, Guatemala as a Peace Corps post may be the most restrictive worldwide. You look at the map of the surrounding countries and the Honduras post is shut-down, as well as El Salvador. We are just west of those countries so this would imply…. that we could be next. The places where I would spend my days if I had the choice would be the big cities: Guatemala City, Xela (pronounced Shayla) and Antigua. Guatemala City is purely off-limits without prior approval for medical or international travel. Other than for those two reasons, YOU CANNOT ENTER. Not for a moment, not for an hour. The equivalent of this is living in Georgia and not being able to go to Atlanta, but the difference is even more extreme. Xela and Antigua are also big cities and are yellow zones: we can be there during daylight only. If you live 2 or 4 hours from these places (as I do, respectively) then you realize that I cannot go there either. Why would I drive 4 hours to then turn right back around so I can get home before 6? That’s the other restriction: no travel after dark. You must be in your pueblo at 6pm. It gets dark here at 6pm all year long, and crimes are so much more likely to occur at night. So there you have it, the travel restrictions suck the fun marrow right out of the bones of being in this country.

Now, it sounds like I’m complaining (well, I am a little) but then I consider that if I were Guatemalan, the safety realities that dictate my travel restrictions are life for Guatemalans. If you work in Guatemala City, you are putting yourself at great risk of being injured, mugged or killed. It is hard to find high-paying jobs outside of Guatemala City, so my young students go there to work during summer vacation, my host sister worked there for 16 years and my training host family lost in-laws over shootings in Guatemala. It’s very dangerous. But what other option do they have when the commercial hub of the country is in the capital and you can only make pennies in comparison if you work outside of it? So then, I don’t feel too bad for myself over the travel restrictions because I try to look at the bigger picture.

This is a GRAND difference between myself and a tourist, free to ignorantly/blissfully roam every inch of the country. If I did that I could lose my job. They hang out in Antigua and Guatemala or they go to Petén blissfully ignorant of the dangers that our Security Manager stays up all night studying and sweating over. (We have to report our whereabouts to him, if we are going to spend the night in anywhere other than site).

The Feeling of Ownership:

People go on vacations so that they don’t belong. Because if you belong, you have to be aware of particular societal issues, you have to pay the bills and you probably have to clean the toilet. Tourists escape their reality for two weeks so that someone else suffers the societal issues, pays the bills and cleans the toilet. If you’re wealthy enough to be able to leave your country.

I want to make a very important distinction which is that, I look like A Tourist. Many volunteers, if they have Latino/Latina roots, aren’t immediately pegged for a Tourist the way I am. And I don’t like immediately paralleled with people who are going somewhere to forget. I’ve done that myself and I’ll do it again, but that’s not why I am here now. I am here to belong to a place and have it belong to me, warts and all.

This Feeling of Belonging is the most complex and strange to know how to maneuver when you encounter a tourist (encounter being an intentional word) but also when you feel it within yourself, tourists aside.

I often feel the pride float up to my chest because not only am I living in a place where they get to enjoy the shiny parts and disappear, I am invested, planted in the quiet in-between space of Santa Clara and existed. How much ‘street cred’ do I earn from diarrea runs, language kerfuffles and learning how to inhale in tight traje belts? Or am I straight up looking at this entirely the wrong way? The selfish, childish part of me feels this pride very viscerally.

But while this collective experience has reframed my worldview and taught me about Guatemala, it doesn’t change my identity. Have I only earned surface stripes? I’m not any more Guatemalan than I was before, just because I am more familiar with Guatemala now. I cannot ‘claim’ Guatemala on my identity tax (if such a thing existed), but I imagine that my lungs are fully supplied with Guatemalan oxygen and my body cells have started to replicate in tortilla shapes and avocado pits.

But this fact doesn’t attenuate the natural desire to appear “more Guatemalan” than visitors. You know what, that’s not the term. The feeling is one of knowing: more immersed, more aware, more enlightened to the way things work and why. It’s absolutely incorrect to lay claim over any part of Guatemala or being Guatemalan, but it’s hard for me to not feel this. I realize what I am saying is not correct, I am not Guatemalan, but it’s a feeling, not a thought or a belief.

Aside From Tourists:

I think that Peace Corps is such a strong brand because we can only identify within our own group. 2 years is such a long time and life in the campo moves so slowly that we can only understand that feeling within our own group. We walk away with this 2-year experience that is hard to name and harder to carry. Where do we belong? A question I will continue to ask, whether I am in Peace Corps or a tourist or a confused US Citizen. And that question I think we all have in common.