Don't Chatter in Loud, Obnoxious English in a Foreign Country, and Other Lessons Learned After Being Robbed at Knifepoint

I’ll tell you what. I wish that I had been robbed at knifepoint in my own country. At least then, I know my money is going to one of my fellow countrymen. Like taxes.

This man was shorter than I and carried nothing more than a sharpened butter knife, but somehow made me feel like I was staring Death in the face. “Plata plata!” he kept insisting. It seemed like hours until he was finally satisfied with my watch, a couple hundred pesos, and my cheap, borrowed cell phone. He walked away eventually, but, probably perplexed by our broken Spanish he stopped to ask, “de donde son?”
“Los Estados Unidos,” we told him. I could tell from his expression that he was dying to know more, but I guess he had some place to be because he took off right after that.

It was no doubt a very scary moment for me. And although its duration was no longer than five minutes, the incident has never left me in the month and a half since it happened. As childishly poetic as it sounds, it managed to really make me question my faith in the goodness of people. This man certainly did not look comfortable doing what he was doing, threatening to hurt a couple of girls and forcefully taking what was not his own. But can we ever get comfortable with behavior like that? Can we ever get to a point where our desperation is so dire, we feel not an ounce of remorse for forcefully taking what we need at the risk of hurting others? Can I ever get to that point?

I don’t think that I will ever get a chance to test myself in that way. I live more-than-comfortably and plan to be so for the rest of my life. But many, many people that I’ve encountered here in Argentina are NOT comfortable. Many people feel unsafe financially, politically, you name it. In my head’s scenario, this man whisked off to a 24-hour drugstore to get medicine for his sick baby (please, bear with it)! And it was this incident that brought me face-to-face with morally-bankrupting destitution. Does this sort of destitution exist in the United States? Of course! But I am blind to it, really. It isn’t standing outside my front door or trying to sell me Disney princess stickers on the subway like it is here. It isn’t shaking me by the throat yelling, “you have too much and I have too little!” like it is here.

I feel that with everything my country has given me (and no doubt much of what I have worked for), I am morally bound to give back to it and my fellow countrymen less fortunate. I feel that every citizen has a similar duty to his/her country. I now plan to neither live abroad nor change my citizenship; I want to see my money go towards institutions (governmental, charitable, or robber-like) that better the lives of my country’s citizens.