Sorry

I’m Hender and when I was between 15 and 16 years old I lived in El Salvador with parts of my family because my parents left the country when i was approximately 1 years old. My parents leave the country because they want a better future for my big brother and for me.  my life was a little bit busy because i just thought of studying and going to the church with my parents and family. In my first three days all problems with gangs started happening when I was going to my high school. I had to leave my high school because we received a call from gang members threatening my family and i , and they wanted to force us to give money.

During the call from gang members, we had to negotiate with them because they did not stop to bother then we had to leave our house and go to another place out of the city .Then my family was talking about emigrating to the United States. Hearing about the story of emigration frightened me. It was difficult for me because i didn’t want to leave my country and my friends in EL Salvador .The most challenging moment was when we left our city and our friends and we started to make our journey.

Then we started to cross the border from El Salvador to Guatemala and we remained there for a while because we got lost . One of my aunt crossed the border of guatemala legal , mi other aunt , big brother ,cousin and i , we couldn’t crossed because we had a little problem in our documents . so my aunt who crossed the border legal she couldn’t stop waiting for us in the border and she went to a city not far away from the border ,we had to crossed the border walking around of big mountain to get to the city and when we got to the city we didn’t know where my other aunt was we called her for many time but we still lost , after two days . .As a result, we found my aunt after two days. Then again we started moving to the border between Guatemala and Mexico

Things changed for me when we found our aunt and my cousin because I felt safe if we keeped together on a dangerous journey. Afterwards we keeped going into the Mexico for 5 days, sleeping in motels even sleeping during the road trip in the bus. Then we keep going and going and finally we get to the border between Mexico and U. S , but we remained there for about 1 month and a half because the “lideres” (leader) said“it’s dangerous to cross the border in this time’’ so we have to wait for a while.

Finally the day came to cross the border between Mexico and U.S. One of my aunts crossed the “Rio Grande” with me in a tire and when we finally crossed the whole river, the border patrol came to my aunt and me and they took us prisoner. So we felt really devastated because that’s not what we wanted. When we get to the border patrol office they separated me from my aunt and they sended me alone to a program and I remained there for 18 long days. However, on June 05 i went to an airport and I was really happy because I met my parents after 16 years . Now my life is safe because i live with my family and we live without problems with gangs.

I still remember that day when i arrive to the airport. My parents were there waiting impatient to meet me for the first time after sixteen long years. When i was walking into the airport i was thinking about how my parents looked like because it was my first time with them after a long time. While i was walking to exit the  airport i was looking around really curious because i wanted to know where my parents was waiting for me. When I approached the exit, i saw my mother and she lunged at me and she hugged me (we are both crying). My father was in shock behind my mother. He could not move anywhere and I saw tearful eyes looking at me . i said , ‘’Hi dad” and he kept standing without saying anything . My mother said‘’Hender, go and hug your father.” I hugged him and we together start crying. Finally he said, “I waited a long time for this day to came.”

That day was the most important in my life. Nowadays i live happy and safe with my family. Now we do what we could not do before during 16 years . It’s important to share my story because i want to people know about how was my journey and what happen during the journey .