Going to Nicaragua's Isla de Ometepe is a budget trip - only if you're from a developed country.
I don’t know why I hate the idea of me being rich.
Maybe its because I don’t like people who flaunt money, or because I’m jealous I never will be rich, or because I’m a good-old America-hating socialist.
Whatever it is, that label was put upon me recently. It made me really uncomfortable.
The night director at my school in Puerto Jimenez said it. He wasn’t being malicious or anything. I was telling him about my travel plans at the time, which didn’t seem extravagant. See more of Costa Rica. Hop into Panama. Back north to Costa and, if I’m lucky, Guatemala.
“I wish I was a rich American with all that time to travel,” he said.
I started to protest. I’m by no means rich. I’m solidly middle-class. When I lived in Chicago, I had an a second-hand laptop, took a budget snowboard vacation every winter, and if I was feeling flush, I’d go to Whole Foods once a week. I shut up before I could explain any of this to him; I had the sense that any one of these things, let alone all of them, would signify wildly wealthy.
This was reinforced a week or two later, while I was attending Spanish school in Orosi, Costa Rica. My teacher and I were practicing past tense to talk about vacations. I was telling her about my trip to Nicaragua, how I enjoyed it so much. She said she’d love to go. And I said, “Well, you should! It’s cheap.” It is, too; spending $20 a day there would be extravagant.
She shot me a look that had the force of a slap. What I didn’t understand was that would be an incomprehensible luxury for her. She explained a vacation was not feasible, not when her family struggles to find money to keep its house. She was working a triple shift in the coming weekend for that very reason.
“Oh,” I said.
Just as I can’t fathom the lives of the multimillionaires working at places like Goldman Sachs, many Central Americans equally are unable to fathom how I can so cavalierly bounce from country to country. To millions of people around the world, I am rich. To deny it is to ignore the massive privilege and luck that came with simply being born in the United States.
It was good to be reminded of that, and I hopefully won’t be prompting any more looks like my teacher’s anytime soon.
Kent most recently left his post as an English teacher in Puerto Jimenez, Costa Rica and is currently traveling. To see what he’s up to, check out his blog or follow him on Twitter.
Latest posts by kentgreen
- The Centries: Handing Out Awards to Central America - August 9th, 2010
- Sub-juncting Myself to a Test of Generosity - August 4th, 2010
- Nobody (At Least Not Me) Knows the Trouble Guatemala's Seen - August 2nd, 2010
- Oh No, Ojos! (or, Why Gringos Don't Make Eye Contact) - July 28th, 2010
- We Dance If We Want To (so why don't we?) - July 26th, 2010
- Getting Schooled in Spanish Schools - July 21st, 2010
- Guatemala's REAL Danger: Not Wanting to Leave - July 19th, 2010
- The Devils of Panama City - July 7th, 2010
- Paging Maintenance, We Have a Crisis in Aisle 4 - July 5th, 2010
- Bye, Bye, Bias - June 30th, 2010
