I despise my morning alarm. However, I still set it for myself every night, so that its inevitable, unignorable clamor pulls me out of bed the next morning, willing or not, to dutifully confront the reality of another day of work and responsibility. But one morning, I awoke not to my alarm, but to a call from my mother. “Hello” I drowsily murmured. “Granny passed away...” my mother softly whispered. Minutes passed as I laid still, contemplating the implication of her words. Death was something that I’d become familiar with as I grew older, but going to my grandmother’s funeral presented a different challenge. “Beep-beep-beep!” As my faithful alarm eventually cried out, I effortlessly extinguished it, knowing that the confrontation of a more worthy antagonist awaited me: Guyana. Days later, as I descended over the dark, mineral stained waters and muddied coast of Guyana, a narrative of guilt looped in my mind. I was finally returning to the country that my parents had left twenty-one years earlier, to pursue a better life for me in America. I knew that the most meaningful travel experience of my life was not going to be a vacation, but rather, a fulfillment of an implied duty to understand the story of survival, spoken by my elders who fled this land. As I walked down the narrow airplane stairs and towards the humble one-story terminal, I was hugged immediately like a returning son by Guyana’s tropical warmth. My story of Guyana began to illustrate itself during the journey from the capital airport to my ancestral village in the eastern region of Berbice. Along the sand-dusted coastal highway, the endless landscape of lush green cash crop, a remnant of Guyana’s colonial history, was interrupted only briefly by the occasional cluster of wooden stilt homes, roadside fruit stands, and its handfuls of West Indian and African inhabitants. Appreciating the unique beauty of unfamiliar landscapes was something that I relished as a traveler, but I knew that at the end of that picturesque journey was the source of my angst. I’d never met most of my family in Guyana, as they’d never left. I couldn’t help but imagine that I’d feel like an outsider: a beneficiary of the first world, who had been gifted with all of the opportunities and material comforts that they never had. “Many people in Guyana earn five thousand a day...” remarked my cousin a few days later, as we handed over that very amount, the equivalent of $24 US dollars, for Guyanese fried rice at a street-side counter in the nearby town of New Amsterdam. I saw for myself that Guyana is still a place of survival. Out of economic necessity, Guyanese families, like mine, derive most meals from vegetables that can be grown, livestock that can be raised, and fish that can be caught, in their backyard. Cooking is a daylong affair, where everyone, from elders to children, plays a role in bringing the Caribbean adapted recipes of their Indian and African ancestors to life. In rural Guyana, if you’ve been blessed today with a hearty meal amongst family, then you ought to be happy until tomorrow. “Ayo name should ah been wok” quipped my aunt as she hung hand-washed laundry to dry one afternoon. As I peered down from the veranda hidden amongst the coconut trees, I saw my mother reciting her story of America, as she gutted a bowl of river catfish diagonally from my aunt. I appreciated at that moment, that our immigrant life in America was also a story of survival, where we worked many jobs, adopted a culture different from our own, and went decades without seeing family. In Guyana, although life is not easy, most days start without a blaring alarm and success is the simple comfort of eating a satisfying meal with family. I wouldn’t exchange my life for theirs, but I don’t feel guilty anymore about living in America, while my family lives in Guyana. Because although the comforts in both the stories of Guyana and America are best appreciated by the characters of the other, each story is still one of survival. “Beep-beep-beep!” And I still despise my morning alarm.