Celebrity status

You know what was always really annoying to me? How celebrities get so much free stuff. They go to awards shows or charity dinners and get amazing gift bags. Restaurants give them dinners and bars give them drinks for free. Fans send them presents and buy them things when they meet them. Designers send them free clothes all the time in hopes they’ll wear them. I think all kinds of product manufacturers send them things, so that the whole world will want their perfume because some celebrity once wore it. And some celebrities actually get paid to show up at certain bars, clubs, restaurants, parties, whatever. It’s patently unfair. They’re the people who least need to get things for free and they’re tripping over giveaways.

I was thinking about this the other day as I ate lunch with the teachers. Small digression: Based on my observations, it seems that about 50% of the time the school principal is not at my school, the teachers get lunch (this is in addition to the two recesses and snack break they all already get). They order food from a nearby housewife who makes food for them and take their sweet time eating it in one of the classrooms. In the past, I’ve seen them do this during the second recess, making it last double the amount of time, which was bad enough. But the other day, they actually shocked me: they sent the kids home early so they could really eat in peace. Yup. The second recess was a little late and I began to think, wow, maybe the teachers are really caught up in their lessons and more teaching is going on than usual. But then when they finally rang the bell for the second recess, all the kids went home and all the teachers gathered in one of the rooms to eat their lunch. It blew my mind…and I thought I was already used to most of these types of Honduran habits.

But anyways, for the first time I tried to pay for my lunch with the teachers that they insisted I join them for. The first few times lunch had happened, I was treated like a real guest and I didn’t know what was going on with the money. This time, with things being more casual, I tried giving money and they wouldn’t let me. I was secretly glad, of course, especially since I’m not usually crazy about the food they get and I’d be happier eating my own sandwich. But it got me thinking about the celebrity thing, even though this is not a good example of it. In Honduras, the teachers actually make a very good salary and are more well off than a large percentage of people – pretty much everyone except for doctors/nurses and true professionals who work in the bigger cities (who have more expenses then, anyway).

But in just about every other case of interacting with Hondurans, I’m the one better off. We were told that 60% of Hondurans live on a dollar or less per day, and this seems to be true based on just what I’ve seen and tried to understand about money and salaries here. Though the host families we’re generally put with are doing a lot better than that, and the people I regularly interact with (teachers, principals, nurses) are doing better than that, in general my town is called a “low-income village.” I imagine this means even more than 60% live on less than a dollar a day. With my PC stipend, I’m on the lowest level and I get more than $7 a day. This is in addition to my rent money, though most Hondurans don’t pay a rent or mortgage or anything. It’s a little mind-boggling; with just my two meals I take from my host family, I spend more than $2.60. It is true that often this is the only money I spend many days, but that’s because there’s really nothing to buy in my town. I usually only ever spend anything when I leave my site (and I like it that way).

Anyway, this is where the celebrity comparison comes into play: everywhere I go, people try to give me things for free. I try to refuse as much as I can, especially when it’s something I don’t actually want at all, but sometimes things are literally forced into my hands and, at that point, it would be rude not to take it. People stop me in the streets to give me oranges or other weird fruits. Every time I go into a house, I’m given some kind of drink and snack (usually coffee with little cookies or sweet bread). The kids at school all want to share their snacks with me and some even invite me to their houses. I’m one of the few people in the community who doesn’t really have to worry about money (beyond trying to decide if I should spend almost $3.50 on a bag of chocolate chips, one of my few real indulgences) and yet I’m treated to free things all the time. Some of it is just Honduran kindness and friendliness – they give coffee to everyone who visits – but no one else is getting stopped in the street or things pushed into their refusing hands.

I guess, in the same way as real celebrities though, it’s not like I’m asking for anything and there’s nothing I can really do about it. But it still makes me feel guilty from time to time when I think about it too much.