A few days after I returned to the good ‘ole USA after living in Honduras for 3 years, my parents took me to a Detroit Tigers baseball game.
Despite the announcer totally annihilating the Latino players’ names on the roster–Eye-van Rawd-reegez (Ivan Rodriguez), Carlos Gweelen (Carlos Guillen), Plas-i-dough Pawlonkoe (Placido Polanco), Magglioh Oar-dough-nezzzzz (Magglio Ordoñez)–I genuinely enjoyed myself. I would say it was… life altering. I was, for the first time in years, proud to be an American.
The announcer said, “Please stand for the national anthem,” with booming, exuberance. I rolled my eyes and hesitantly laid my right hand over my heart. I was accustomed to politely paying homage to the people of my country (the people of the world) with my mouth closed. But this day was different.
My eyes swelled with tears.
I thought, “OMG. Look how clean this stadium is. I feel so safe and free and comfortable.” I pictured Walter tucked away in a holding cell in an obscure Tegucigalpa police station because he didn’t have the registration papers for the bike my friend Joe had given him for doing chores around his house in Lomas de Toncontin. I remembered the woman who used to come to our house with an open wound in her stomach asking for money for a surgery. I remembered the human rights lawyer Dionisio who was murdered for protecting the rights of laborers.
In the US, we have checks and balances. We have safety and freedom. We have opportunity. We have certain amounts of equality that can’t even be fathomed in other parts of the world.
Clearly, the US is not perfect, and there are so many things that I love even more about Honduras, like the weather, the communal lifestyle, and the fresh mangos. But I felt so lucky to have been born into a free country.
I was happy to be home and overwhelmed with the challenge of being an American, and ready to bear the weight of the responsibility of privilege that goes with it. Finally.
en palabras 
Good reflections! You know, it’s strange, after my move from Atlanta I re-experienced this to a certain extent. Like, oh, okay, not all of North America is disfunctional…. Well, kind of harsh of me to say that about the lovely ATL, but anyways, sometimes we need to move on from a place we’ve loved but also felt frustrated by. Just like I’d love to go back to Tegus, I now feel similarly about Atl. Hopefully I won’t start feeling that way about my new home! (sorry, this is a scattered response from me!)