Lost

outsidethebeltway

In another piece written by one of my students, a young teenage girl from Guatemala writes about her harrowing journey from Central America to the United States. Freshly arrived, she wrote this as an essay in Spanish and translated it via Google translate.  As I read through the piece in my editing stage, I thought it read more like a poem.  To me, it captures the inner struggle that these children must face and the constant fear they endure during their voyage.  Check out Lost...

I am a Guatemalan with dreams of overcoming my problems

My trip started on December 4, 2017

With a prayer to God to take care of me on the way

There I left my childhood, my family

To come to this new place

With a lump in my throat, I said goodbye

Time progressed and with each moment

I was moving farther way from them

Two days by bus, we reached the border with Mexico

We crossed at night, in fear, ,among so many strangers

We arrived, locked away for two days until finally they came for us

A truck, ready to start crossing the desert

They dropped us at 3 A.M., 

with nothing but backpacks, water and a garbage bag

To protect us from the cold and the rain

In the morning, we were separated into three groups

Told to look for the famous line with guides who "knew where we were"

By the fourth day, we were all supposed to meet again

Unfortunately it was not meant to be

What happened to the rest of the group, I do not know

The guide went back for the rest, leaving us

On our own, to get to that line

I know he feared something would happen to us too

But he left us anyway, to walk through the desert on our own

Two days, no water, and the fatigue was surely fatal

The only thing we had was to ask God

To give us the strength to follow on

I don't know whatever happened to my travel companions

But I wish them the best since their decisions weren't easy either

As always, thanks for reading.  Stay tuned for more...