By William Flagg

Before you read this, I want you to look up Guatemalan US News. If I was a betting man I would wager that the majority of what you read will be negative. When I did the same, I was inundated with stories of violence, criminal organizations, and immigration. Perhaps my news feed is more prone to negative stories. Nevertheless, this was the original mindset I carried in the airport in Richmond. I was nervous. For one, I was traveling with Callie, someone I had never really even spoken to before this. Also I was totally unsure of how the trip would pan out. My best buddy Blake Berry was not going with me on this one.

So there I was, sitting in a small boarding lobby amongst almost a hundred people, all going to Guatemala. I had wondered, what did they think of the gringo going off to their country? Would I be welcomed? Before I could even finish my thought, it was time to board. Step after step, I loped my way through the gates. This was the point of no return. My mind went blank. Everything was up in the air. Actually I take that back. We wouldn’t be in the air until takeoff. Which had been an annoyingly long amount of time.

A Guatemalan man, Callie, and I were all packed into this metal bird and pressure sealed like sardines at God knows how high in the air, when something told me to speak to the Guatemalan man next to me. Or perhaps he had spoken to me first. I am not sure. Either way, we exchanged names, where we were from, and some basic information. I was going on a school trip to Guatemala for a week and some change, and he was traveling back to Guatemala to stay after ten years. It was a one way ticket. After all those years, for whatever reason, he could not stay in Atlanta anymore. It stung. For once I felt empathy with the same people I had always distantly stared at from across streets, through car windows, or in news articles. While the plane climbed and climbed, cutting through the clouds, I gently fell asleep thinking about this while hunched over in my delta airlines chair. I awoke to the sound of a shuffling snack cart. To my surprise, this man whom I empathized with had asked for snacks for me and Callie. It was a simple gesture, only a bag of chips, but for me, it was anything but small. 

While we flew over green mountains the Guatemalan and I talked about our families while I watched the hills rise and fall like waves. I noticed every person huddled at the edge of their sits, staring out of their windows. Perhaps they were all returning after a long time away from home. While talking with this man, I began to remember something. Talking with him was not too different from stumbling over my Spanish words or working on rolling my r’s with my grandparents, or my Cuban family members. In fact, those feelings of nervous anticipation blew away like gusts of wind over the plane’s wings. For the first time on this journey, I felt a weird feeling, like I was at home. 

This feeling only got stronger and stronger throughout the trip. In fact, it felt as if something I had lost long ago was being replaced. I felt extremely proud of my heritage in these moments. Whatever small connection I had to these people, purely by coincidence of sharing a couple ancestors, felt like I was part of the family in these few moments. Between joking with people at street markets, being invited to have dinner with a Guatemalan friend, Rodrigo, from Christchurch, meeting my brother’s study mate Esteban Meneses, his brother Santi, and their family, or meeting people on the street during a local street festival, I always felt connected. These people always had something to offer. They were confident, joyous, and inviting. These people were not how I expected.

So to whomever reads this, you may feel uncomfortable, or anxious, you can even hate all you want, but before you do, go travel to lake Atitlan for a week, learn about coffee from the Meneses family, maybe talk to a Guatemalan on your flight, or spent a night eating with Rodrigo and his friends. You will learn more from this than reading 10,000 articles about Guatemala. We are truly not so different after all.