I had never met a gypsy before I moved to Spain. Gitanos was the word we learned to call them in our University classes, but vagabundos was what my host mom called them. Vagabonds. I just never felt right about that, even if they did assault you on the street for spare change.
 
It wasn't that gypsies were just poor Spanish folk. No, they were a different ethnic group altogether. Many were Moroccan immigrants, and others were some strange mix of Arab and Spaniard. They didn't speak Spanish - at least, no Spanish I had ever learned. They rattled off curses at you in a bizarre dialect that none of Spanish classes had prepared me for (note to the reader: it's called Romani).
 
The gypsies of southern Spain reminded me of Mickey O'Neill (Brad Pitt's character) and the other Irish Pikeys in the movie Snatch. O'Neill's relationship to his other fellow Irishmen was a lot like how I saw Spaniards interacting with the gitanos. They didn't understand them, and mostly kept their distance.
 
I was told that the gypsies lived on the outskirts of Seville and, apart from begging on the streets outside of cathedrals, didn't have much to do with the majority population. They were the kind of people that the travel agencies warned you about. However, every Saturday, they would open up their camp to the public, setting up tables and tents full of handmade clothes, pirated DVDs, and other affordable goods to sell. The same Sevillians that judged them the other six days of the week would flock to the gypsy camp and go from tent to tent, purchasing exotic-looking scarves and jewelry cases.
 
Honestly, I didn't know what to think of the gypsies. One day, I was curiously checking out a Catholic mass (a new and exotic sight in itself to my Presbyterian eyes), and as I was exiting, a gypsy woman stopped me. She uttered a few words that I couldn't understand and then pointed my attention to a cardboard sign she had written in broken Spanish that said something about giving alms to the poor and concluded with a "Dios le bendiga" (God bless you).

I panicked. Since I hadn't figured out what to make of the gypsies yet and was being put on the spot, I did what many might do - I reacted out of fear. I threw a Euro in the box and scurried away. And then I heard it - the voice that would change how I viewed Spanish gypsies, Mexican-American immigrants, and even the local poor in Nashville:
 
"You know, Jeff, the most valuable thing you can give these people is your time." The words were so heavy on my soul, I was worried that I might fall down as I fled in fear from the gypsy woman. The voice was God's voice, of course, and I'll never forget it. Admittedly, I didn't go back to see that woman. I wish I had, but I didn't. I was still pretty scared.
 
And the next time I came across someone who was different from me - this time a wandering vagrant from Germany - I was, again, pretty scared. And once again, I walked on, ignoring him. But I heard that familiar voice, the same one that had told me to give my time to people that were different from me. And I turned back, but that is a whole other story.
 
I've never regretted giving my time to people that were different from me, whether they be homeless, drunk, dying of AIDS, uneducated, helpless, black, hispanic, or even gypsy.
 
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