To pay interest on (a debt).

“A group like this could not have developed unless a mood in the United States had supported it – the belief that any true American must share God’s blessings with his poorer fellow men. The idea that every American has something to give, and at all times may, can and should give it, explains why it occurred to students that they could help Mexican peasants ‘develop’ by spending a few months in their village” -Ivan Illich, To Hell with Good Intentions

This quote appears near the beginning of Ivan Illich’s To Hell with Good Intentions address to the Conference on Inter-American Student Projects in Cuernavaca, Mexico (1968). Illich uses this quote to initiate his oposal of international service work. Illich believes that because of the “American way of life,” Americans feel the need to do volunteer in poorer international countries. Almost as if providing service to these countries was their “manifest destiny”; because they are superior, they must help those below them…