Guatemala Part 2

A visit to Quetzeltenango brought us what we were most hoping for from our trip. A chance to immerse ourselves in Guatemalan culture and learn how people live in different places. We traveled via public bus to a local food market, where vendors carried vegetables in bulk, sometimes six or more feet high and weighing over a hundred pounds on their backs from stall to vehicle to be taken to local stores and restaurants. People began before dawn, often leaving their villages at one or two in the morning, driving for hours to get to the city market, only to leave at noon, drive home, harvest, and do it all again the next day. Every day.

Getting off the bus, I was approached by a man much shorter than I who wanted to practice his English. I had been practicing my Spanish in Guatemala, but was happy to chat in whatever language he wanted. The man had recently lived and worked as a line cook in Tacoma, about 45 minutes south of my home, a city we visited every couple of months. We learned he had been sending money home, and was looking to get back, but at the time (November), he was in Guatemala. He left the loud part silent. Getting back to his girlfriend up north was going to be difficult. She was a citizen. He was not, and he didn’t have a clear route back. We are so quick to think about the impacts of our country’s policies as a whole, but rarely do we think about the individuals, their circumstances, their families, and pain caused to each member of those families torn apart. Where has our empathy gone? And if it’s still present, why aren’t more of us doing something about it? I’m just as guilty as everyone else in this, doing my job, working for the students in my school, but feeling burned out on the country’s politics. These families are still fighting. I could be too.

In the evening, we were informed that the city, nicknamed Xela, was playing in the Central American Cup Championship against a team from Costa Rica. The game was being streamed in the main square in front of city hall. So what better way to get to know a place than join hundreds of residents in cheering on the home team as they played a country away. Packed in among residents, we cheered as they scored, danced and high fived as the underdogs walked away with a tie, and took in the festive atmosphere of a joyous people, proud of their city, celebrating with friends and family. The night was punctuated with fireworks and a sense of community with a group we didn’t even know.

The perspective of travel is so immense that it transforms one’s view on the world. Get out of the house, go visit a new place. Take a risk, talk to someone you don’t share a common first language with, learn, grow, see the world in a new light. When you return home, you’ll see there are always benefits in somewhere else.