once upon a time in central america: wāḥid.
The following days after meeting the orphaned kids, there was ever wondering of where the world was headed. The faces of children would constantly harrow my dreams, the in between moments or reflected thoughts, all driving an unnatural force of hope. Children whose meaningless and insignificant lives to their masters brought about different feelings toward complete strangers, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one affected. I slept those nights restless and imagining myself lying poor, hungry or covered in grime trying to support my two younger siblings... waking up from dreams of emotions i could scarce comprehend. The last few weeks I spent in China were a haze, trying to figure out my world I was headed back to and what was going on there if but all just meaningless shit. Jeff and I spent hours on our bikes roaming the city as if to fill up our minds with culture, and spare moments talking about what was actually happening, and why we were waking up at night in tears. It's almost as if the time spent there, and those moments in my mind have been locked up in a box and put into storage back in the recesses of my brain somewhere, so emotion doesn't confuse my ability to function in the real world, because I wasn't able to.
I remember flying into Chicago, and my parents and Lina being at the airport to see us all. I couldn't handle it. The group insisted that we should all ride back to the school together as if america could hold back for a few moments while we grouped up. We disembarked at the school to hordes of people excited for our return. High fives were exchanged, and people were grabbed and thrown into the air to the excitement of everyone around. Notes were handed off to students that had met people on prior trips and after a few hours the excitement wore off and reality hit. I can remember crawling into the backseat of my parent's van and crying for a while. No one understood my fear of getting stuck in america or the eyes that stared into my soul as I slept.
Dave got us tickets to Guatemala later that week, and I still had classes to finish, but there was hope...for something greater... and it was on the horizon.
We met up in Detroit to fly to Guatemala City, and had a layover in Miami. As we were flying into Guatemala City I had a window seat and kept looking at the cityscapes getting closer as the sun had been high in the sky, it began to set and the hills and mountains were getting more and more pronounced the closer to land we got. As we were told to buckle our seat belts and prepare for arrival I realized that we didn't really have a very good plan. We had a backpack each and no idea where we would sleep that night. We figured we could find a corner or somewhere that didn't have much traffic if we needed to, but we wanted to go completely as the wind would take us. The wheels touched with a screech and we had arrived. Getting a visa was nothing more than a stamp on our passport. 90 days of freedom, if we so wished. We went to the baggage claim, which was nothing more than one bag carousel, winding round and round bringing bags to everyone around. I sighed when I saw my red backpack, knowing I didn't want to be stuck without a bag, but we just had to wait for Dave's. A few more minutes had passed and the bags started getting fewer, I got more nervous for Dave. His bag hadn't come. All the bags were gone, and we could see outside and it was getting dark. The sun had already set. I was reminded of this feeling I had when Lina and I got stuck in the Ivory Coast, and were completely lost.... But we headed towards the counter and stood behind a sort of blonde girl who was filling out paperwork. I started in, "You lost your bag too?" Dave ended up continuing the conversation and as we both were filling out paperwork found out that her bag was nearly the same size and color as hers. "Where are you guys staying?" She ended up asking at one point, to which Dave impromptu answered jokingly, "with you?" She answered, "Actually, I'm going to Antigua to this jungle party youth hostel, and I have a taxi all lined up. We should have room without the bags and the hostel usually always has room..." How could we refuse? She hooked us up, and we ended up kinda getting scammed on the taxi as far as payment, but she was really cool, ANDD gerrrmann. We got to the hostel, and they were glad to have us.
I remember flying into Chicago, and my parents and Lina being at the airport to see us all. I couldn't handle it. The group insisted that we should all ride back to the school together as if america could hold back for a few moments while we grouped up. We disembarked at the school to hordes of people excited for our return. High fives were exchanged, and people were grabbed and thrown into the air to the excitement of everyone around. Notes were handed off to students that had met people on prior trips and after a few hours the excitement wore off and reality hit. I can remember crawling into the backseat of my parent's van and crying for a while. No one understood my fear of getting stuck in america or the eyes that stared into my soul as I slept.
Dave got us tickets to Guatemala later that week, and I still had classes to finish, but there was hope...for something greater... and it was on the horizon.
We met up in Detroit to fly to Guatemala City, and had a layover in Miami. As we were flying into Guatemala City I had a window seat and kept looking at the cityscapes getting closer as the sun had been high in the sky, it began to set and the hills and mountains were getting more and more pronounced the closer to land we got. As we were told to buckle our seat belts and prepare for arrival I realized that we didn't really have a very good plan. We had a backpack each and no idea where we would sleep that night. We figured we could find a corner or somewhere that didn't have much traffic if we needed to, but we wanted to go completely as the wind would take us. The wheels touched with a screech and we had arrived. Getting a visa was nothing more than a stamp on our passport. 90 days of freedom, if we so wished. We went to the baggage claim, which was nothing more than one bag carousel, winding round and round bringing bags to everyone around. I sighed when I saw my red backpack, knowing I didn't want to be stuck without a bag, but we just had to wait for Dave's. A few more minutes had passed and the bags started getting fewer, I got more nervous for Dave. His bag hadn't come. All the bags were gone, and we could see outside and it was getting dark. The sun had already set. I was reminded of this feeling I had when Lina and I got stuck in the Ivory Coast, and were completely lost.... But we headed towards the counter and stood behind a sort of blonde girl who was filling out paperwork. I started in, "You lost your bag too?" Dave ended up continuing the conversation and as we both were filling out paperwork found out that her bag was nearly the same size and color as hers. "Where are you guys staying?" She ended up asking at one point, to which Dave impromptu answered jokingly, "with you?" She answered, "Actually, I'm going to Antigua to this jungle party youth hostel, and I have a taxi all lined up. We should have room without the bags and the hostel usually always has room..." How could we refuse? She hooked us up, and we ended up kinda getting scammed on the taxi as far as payment, but she was really cool, ANDD gerrrmann. We got to the hostel, and they were glad to have us.