SPRINGDALE — A Swedish television reality show gave Travis McAfee the chance to explore the land of his ancestors and give Swedish viewers a small taste of his family’s life in Arkansas, including their activities at St. Raphael Church in Springdale.
McAfee didn’t walk away with the grand prize — a meeting with his Swedish cousins — but he’s happy as the first runner-up.
“I feel like I am a real winner. I did as much as I could do without winning” the grand prize. Besides that, he got to pursue his fondest hobby — genealogy — and attend Mass at several Swedish churches.
The show is “Allt for Sverige” (translated “All for Sweden;” the U.S. title is “Great Sweden Adventure”). Contestants are Americans of Swedish descent who have never visited Sweden. McAfee learned about the show after a cousin took part in “Alt for Norge,” the Norway version of the show. He (and about 3,000 other people) applied for Season 2 of the Swedish show. Several interviews later, McAfee won a trip to Hollywood for a face-to-face interview.
“That was exciting in itself,” he said.
Weeks later, producers asked for yet another long-distance interview via Skype. During that interview McAfee learned he was a winner.
“They wanted my reaction to being chosen to be on the show,” he said.
Before the Swedish expedition began, a camera crew spent two days in Arkansas. Footage they shot was used to introduce McAfee to viewers and included scenes of the Elm Springs home where McAfee, his wife Jamie, and their daughter Bree live. There were also scenes from St. Raphael where the couple teaches a confirmation class. Daughter Bree is a first grader at the parish school and Travis McAfee previously worked as the parish youth director.
Once in Sweden, the 10 contestants visited various parts of the country. Each week, one person was eliminated through an activity with some Swedish history. The episodes are available on YouTube and are mostly in English; the one exception is the portion of each show when the host explains — in Swedish — the elimination activity.
There’s no language barrier when the competition begins, however. One challenge McAfee successfully competed in involved stacking water glasses on a tray. For each round, contestants added another tier of glasses and then carried the tray a few steps to another table. McAfee seemingly balanced his stack easily, at least until the other contestant dropped hers. In the final competition, however, he was tripped up by a giant jigsaw puzzle that his opponent solved more quickly.
Unlike some other reality shows, Allt for Sverige contestants who lost a weekly competition were sent home right away instead of lingering for the last episode. McAfee said they packed their bags each week and said good bye to each other, which was difficult as they became good friends through the course of the show.
In one episode, McAfee and two other male contestants decided they wanted to be “hipsters.” They shopped for appropriate clothing and then McAfee went off to seek sartorial advice. He ended up shaving his full beard down to a mustache; somewhere along the line, he became clean-shaven.
Prior to the show, McAfee knew one set of great-grandparents on his father’s side of the family had immigrated from Sweden. They came separately, met in San Francisco and eventually married. But that was as far back as he had managed to trace his family. Now, thanks to a family tree and other genealogical research he received as a result of being a contestant, McAfee has traced some relatives back to the 1500s.
McAfee attended Mass several times during the five-plus weeks he was in Sweden. Nearing the end of his trip, he asked others connected with the show if they wanted to come along. “Six of us went,” he said. “They were happy to go.”
While Sweden is not known as a Catholic country, it is home to many Catholic immigrants from other nations so the Church is growing there. McAfee said he saw many faith connections throughout his travels.
“I prayed about it,” he said about making the trip. “I believe God is in everything.”
McAfee, who is entering a University of Arkansas master’s program where he hopes to earn an advanced degree to teach science, gives kudos to wife Jamie, an accountant at Tyson Foods, since she shouldered all the family responsibilities during his absence. “She made a lot of sacrifices for me,” he said.
But she’s getting a trip, too, as the couple is planning a Swedish vacation this spring, and they’ll be accompanied by Jamie’s brother and sister-in-law. Later, the McAfees will travel to a reunion of the show’s contestants from Season 2 in Minnesota, as close as they can get in the U.S. to the midnight sun that Sweden enjoys.
