With all my complaining about my hotel, I have to concede that their service is, well not exactly excellent, but they get an ‘A’ for effort. Their restaurant (where the wifi seems to work) is open 24-hrs and with only me and a chain-smoking Javanese man (who has to sit right next to me???) in the cafeteria sized dining room, they have 8 (seriously 8) staff members standing just a few feet away, ready to refill my 9/10ths full glass of water immediately following my first sip. Although appreciative, it made me feel a little awkward and I took my leave up the long driveway to the main street in search of a working ATM that wouldn’t reject my one and only card for the trip. There was a little store just to the right of the driveway and I gathered a ‘few’ things that were in plain sight giving up asking if they had a gift bag because, judging by the clerks perplexed expressions that just kept nodding at me, my charades was seriously lacking in it’s intended message.

Suddenly, the man behind me in line said something in a dramatic tone, shaking his head and gesturing at the pile of markers and paper I had amassed on the counter. “Lots of children,” I smiled brightly.  He almost looked angry and repeated his exasperated rant. “I don’t understand,” I said, but he took a heavy breath and turned his back to me and busied himself looking at something behind the counter. The clerk looked down, but I caught his gaze and he seemed almost disappointed that we made eye contact. “What is he saying?” I insisted. His forehead scrunched up like he was concentrating very hard, “crazy” was all he could come up with, but it made perfect sense in this situation and I felt a wave of shame and anxiety that left a pins and needles tingling in my hands and a short catch in my breath.

I knew when he said ‘crazy’ he meant me, and not the exasperated man in line behind me.  Admittedly I go a little nuts around gift giving, especially with the recipients being 2 little boys that I’ve been sponsoring through Childfund International (www.childfund.org) who I was finally going to meet in person. What started as grabbing some crayons for the almost 3-year-old twins, turned into ‘I should get something for all the children in the village so that they don’t feel left out’. “Crazy” in this case meant spending what would sum up to an average yearly wage for a local worker here in Java on hello kitty and angry birds notebooks.

I was embarrassed by the way I easily drew a fist full of colorful rupiah from my bag, dropping several large bills onto the floor on accident because my wad of money was discombobulated in random piles carelessly dropped into my bag where the bills found homes between some pages of my notebook and mixed in with random papers I carry with me all of the time.

It seemed like the small store was suddenly quite crowded and all eyes were not on me, but on the stacks of bills I counted onto the counter. Even the extra clerks just stared in my direction.

Instead of my usual euphoric high that I normally get from great acts of generosity, I felt sick to my stomach looking past the judging expressions of the locals. I was momentarily grateful for the two armed security guards that stood watch at the door of the small convenience store and the two security gates complete with armed watchmen that I passed at my hotel to get back to my room. I kept trying to remind myself that I wasn’t a horrible person for bringing gifts to the children, and I can’t feed and save everyone in the world…but my reassurances were little help to the picture burned into my mind of the weathered skin and cracked hands of a man I was sure worked longer and harder than I ever have, and his culturally uncharacteristic display of disgust with my ‘Paris Hilton’ spoiled American public display of affluence.