Well, well…
It has been around two weeks since I left the states in order to find a path towards freedom. As some of you might know, I was an undocumented student in the state of Kansas, and after many weeks of having “nervous breakdowns” I decided to move back. This move is something I thought I would never do in my own will, but now I am sitting here typing my story miles away from Kansas.
First, I want to say that I definitely regret my trip. I regretted this trip before I had quit my job, internship, and school in the states; even before I had even bought my airplane tickets. But to tell you the truth, I didn’t/don’t think I could have made it in the states by the end of the year. I was facing a situation where I had to either cut school, or live somewhere outside a roof. Personally, when I figured that I had the chance to go back before my 19th birthday and be able to apply in three years, it seemed like it was a perfect risk. I could not think about cutting school when it is my ultimate goal for the next four years, and living on the streets just to go to school is something I consider extreme in my undocumented life in the US. Plus, just to give you an idea of how things were turning out, when I sold my car to leave the states, I used the money to pay traffic tickets that were on their root, planted on the fact that I did not have a driver's license.
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Funny how a mentality can change; in the states, for example, my mind had been focused in solving problems by optimizing the best solutions physically or mentally, meaning, I had kept so little attention to how pretty and developed my surroundings in the states looked. But once I landed and started navigating one of the most developed cities of my home country, two words came into my mind (and please pardon my vocabulary, but I want to be honest):
-“OH SHIT!”
I expected trash, I expected extremely poor street vendors, and all of these things, but for some reason I could not stop from being shocked by the streets. The houses, the dust, and the street signs, which so many throw the buzz words “luxury” and “comfort”; they just gave me this feeling that is between pity and fear. Don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely opposed to the idea of comparing third world countries to first world countries, and despise the poor ones for being poor. I was just shocked. With that said, I traveled a distance that in the states would have taken less than an hour, but here it took six hours because of the road conditions and the maximum speed limit of nearly 30 mph.
Once I arrived to my village, I was so happy to see how much it had advanced. Now, I could see the recently put traffic lights and the growth in housing (there’s a boom here!). But at the same time, I was welcomed to things that are not common in the states. For one, the tap water can sometimes run brown after a storm, and it is very common for the electricity to go off for an entire day. I still have to adjust to those, but I think one of things that might be hard to adjust to, it just how business hours are defined here. It seems like businesses start opening at 9:00am, have a two hour break from 12:00am-2:00pm, and close at 4:00pm. Things I would happily find at Wal-Mart in the US, are not available here after 4:00pm. Ugh! My brother emphasized that point to me the night before my flight, but to me these things had been things that I didn’t have to have as a priority in the states.
With the laidback attitude towards life here, I can sincerely declare that I might turn out crazy(ier). I am just not enjoying taking a day as it comes. I clearly remember the energy I got from being pressured and having to plan schedules that would cover whole weeks, with breaks in between for the meals. There’s none of that here, productivity can be so low it makes me nuts. For that reason, I think I should just start doing some project of my own. I mean, school just ended here, and I will have to wait until February to start attending college.
I am nervous about attending college here, especially when I am not really good at writing in my native language. Another, and primarily, the reason why I’m nervous is that I will have to face a high rate of crime once I go back to the city where I landed in order to attend school. People could easily get away with stabbing you because they might want rob the $5 that you have in your pocket. Also, like I said, that 6 hours drive won’t be fun at all, or even driving on roads where most are not following any transit rules. I just wish there was a school that had dorms, but from what I’ve seen, none of the ones that offer engineering do.
For now, I can’t say I will have a structure for this blog because I am so overwhelmed with things I want to tell you. But I think as time passes by, it’ll be more organized and perhaps, have a stronger theme. I will leave you here, and keep writing later on. I have to catch up on my internet life, as it is today that I finally installed the internet in my house. Talk to you later, bye.
Hopefully,
Hermes Des Ailes.
PS: I will add pics!
