| EXCERPTS
I've never met someone who is living in our building. “Is there someone
really living here? Are we alone? Never. I said, “That's
impossible.” Most of the time I try for the first time to say, “Hello,”
but they don't answer. That's so hard to believe. People in my country
in the neighborhood where I live, every morning you will say, “Hi,” to
more than hundreds of people. You will meet everybody first in the
street, just raise your and or say, “Hi,” and keep going and everybody
knows everybody or least they try. You don't feel alone. There is no
loneliness [in Burkina Faso]. None at all. You are always surrounded
by people you know.
AMADOU TANDINA, Burkina Faso
If I think of my daughter, try to understand this. I would like her to
study here but to live over there because I love my culture, I love my
country, I love how parents grow up their children over there. When you
are here and you see that parents are always working or somewhere else,
and several times you have to take your children to other people to take
care of them. I think that sense of family and parenthood and all that,
it's kind of secondary. But in our country, whew, since a child is born
and starts breast-feeding and is always with their parents and
everything. I think the education of childrens is better in my country
'cause that sense of family and respect and all that stuff.
ELI RAMÍREZ, Guatemala
March 30th. We landed at O'Hare. It was already 5:00 at night, getting
dark and all my husband's relatives were inside the building, and Boris,
also. Oh, my goodness. It was hugness! I was almost dead. I thought
that I was dreaming. Hugness, laughness, tears, smileness. They
touched me and they touched my family like we were not here, just the
shape of us is here. Boris said, “You're here, you're here!” 200
percent we knew it was for good.
ELENA RASKIN, Belarus
I wrote extensive, large, huge letter to my family explaining
everything, but I say, “You know what, I am buying at the Aldi
[supermarket]. This is very, very cheap place. I don't know why people
doesn't like to buy here. It's the same food that's in the
Jewel[supermarket]. It is excellent. It is good. I will buy there
forever.” And I say, “The Family Dollar. Oh, this is fantastic. For
one dollar you can buy very good things here.”
Now I don't know how long I have been in this Aldi or this Family
Dollar. Now I hate these places [Laughs.] because the quality is not
the same. I have learned that the things that are cheap are no good….At
the beginning I have to buy my shoes at the Payless Shoes. Now, I don't
buy any shoes at Payless Shoes. Now my shoes have to be no less than
$40 or $60.
PILAR LANDA, Cuba
[I was a] waitress. To waitress where I have to heat the
food, pizza, or strudel, take the order and take the money, too. And
then it really was hard. I didn't know the English…
The worst of all was one guy get there asking me something,
and I couldn't understand what he was talking about. And then he said
to me, “Can you find somebody that speak English!?” But in a way like
you were [dirt].
I didn't answer…But the way I look at him, I was showing how
much I hate him. And in myself I was thinking, “Yes, I don't speak
English, this is true, but how many languages do you speak? What is
your degree? Who are you? I don't speak language, but I'm not stupid”
But I didn't say nothing. I only look at him all the time until he sit
down. And when he left, I still keep my eyes on him and I look to let
him know what my feeling was about him.
PILAR LANDA, Cuba
The American dream for me is leave many things which you have in your
country. Maybe a good life. American dream is leave many things, many
friends, many good times, is work a lot, is feel many times frustrated.
That is for me the American dream.
LUISA CARDENAS, Chile
What I think is to be immigrant—what an immigrant feel, only an
immigrant can really understand. But really, when you know that you are
closing the door you have behind, it is closed, and you are opening a
door that you doesn't know what is in front of you, you doesn't know
your destiny, it is really hard, really hard. You have to change the
way you think sometimes. You have to change some of your culture.
You're obligated to change. Not everything. I don't mean you have to
Americanize, but I mean you have to make a lot of change. And it is
really hard. Everybody are not so lucky like us…
I think we sometimes work harder than the Americans because
we have to jump many barriers. The barrier of language, the barrier of
culture. We didn't, for example, never before knew about taxes or
credit card, or nothing like that. We have to learn. When you are a
boy, you have five years to learn the basic language. When you are
immigrant, you don't have any years. You have to come here and you have
to start speak if you want to survive…The immigrant doesn't have time…I
think many people can get so stressed and so depressed…Maybe the people
that was before very fun, or happy, or very nice, they can get angry,
sad, until they suicide. We have to think that an immigrant usually, I
think, 95 percent are depressed. And I'm very conservative because we
sometimes are depressed, too. They feel that they are not human, that
somebody's better than you and you are nothing.
PILAR LANDA, Cuba
I remember sometimes at the time I used to go to bed in
Cuba, I was so, so, so hungry that I got a pain in my stomach and I
couldn't sleep. And I told Pilar, “Pilar, you know what? I am so
hungry that the pain is killing me.”
And Pilar told me, “You know what? There is nothing to eat,
so go and drink a little water with sugar and there is nothing more.”
And in this country, a homeless has $5 to go to McDonald's or Denny's or
whatever. Even I don't understand now, I couldn't understand before,
and I won't understand in the future how come in this country there are
people homeless. Because here if you got a job, even the worst job, $5
and hour, you can live, because we did it. Without English, without
anything. So how come American people can be homeless?
CARLOS DOMÍNGUEZ, Cuba
Let's not talk about immigrants. Let's talk about in general all the
people. You can't judge anybody just for the appearance or the color of
skin or the nationality. Or you can't judge anybody for the money they
have. You have to go a little more behind the rags the banker can have
on, or maybe a little more than the blond and the pretty eyes. You have
to go to the person, not the body or the appearance. You have to go for
the person because everybody has a lot pf story behind, and you don't
know why the person is here, what circumstances of his life brought him
here. And maybe you have to think that maybe you can be in that
position sometime because the life, you don't know where you are going
to end. In my country there is an ancient saying that, “You don't spit
to the sky because sometime it come back to you.” No escupas al cielo
porque te puede caer a ti mismo. So, you can't judge anybody, so you
are not going to be judged. Well, I think this is it.
FELIPE CHING, Peru
I'm not going to say I'm Haitian only. I'm Mardocheé Jean
Charles. I feel everywhere I go is my country, I can live. Even if
someone wanna send me to Africa, I'm not gonna have any problems to go
there, because I'm gonna live anyway. I'm a person and the world is for
everybody. It's not Haiti for me and U.S. for you. I'm Haitian because
my culture, my country, but I'm not gonna say, “I'm Haitian,” like I
wanna be just Haitian. I'm a man in the world.
MARDOCHÉE JEAN CHARLES, Haiti
The people talk about the freedom, but the people do not understand
exactly what is freedom. You have to stay in a freedom place, but it's
important that the other countries, the other place have to be freedom,
too. If not, you never will be freedom. If the people there don't have
a good country, a good life, they come here to damage you.
I think Americans need to learn about that. For me, I
understand that more. I know the bad countries. I know the freedom
countries. And I know what the people think about that. You cannot be
free if the others is not free. This is the situation.
SERGIO SOARES, Brazil
Every day was just a hustle day. At times you got one meal at night.
The war just
disrupted the economy and everything and hunger was all over. To get a
meal is very hard, too. Even you have the money, but you can't get it.
If you got one meal, you can stay until the next day. But mostly with
the kids what happened was we have those trees like mango trees and you
just go and hustle on your own and get something. If you get one or
two, you eat it and you drink water. That's how survival was because if
you depend on the meal at home, you're not gonna survive on it because
it was hard to come by…And sometimes you walk miles to go in the bush
and find some fruit and take some, eat it, and come back home. It was
just survival. That's it. It was not eat and enjoy. We were going to
school sometimes, sometimes not, because even sometimes you don't want
to go to school because you're hungry. And at that time, nothing get in
your head. You're thinking about when you're gonna get a meal today.
I started as a steward [at the Hyatt Regency]. You wash
dishes basically on the machine. We got a big machine I never seen
before. [Laughs.]
I think what I learned from that was that it was so hard for
me to look at that and waste food actually. I didn't want to do that,
but it's part of the job. I just think if I could have a way to feed
people back there with all this food, I would have done it. But there
is no way that you can do that. But there is so much food that is
wasted in most of the hotels in the United States. It's not given to
anybody. Even some food comes back and nobody touched it and it's your
job, it's your duty. You have to waste it. You can't do nothing with
that. So that was a difficult thing. Sometimes I would just look at
the food and stare at it and think, “How many people will this save at
this time?”
DENG DENG AGOT, Sudan
I got my ID card. I got my social security, everything. Just a funny
thing I remember. I went to get my driver's license. And usually in
the back of the license they ask you agree to donate your organs. And I
was new. I was here like one month. I tried to get my driver's
license. And the guy ask me, “Do you want to give your organ?”
Something like that.
And I didn't know organ means also tissue. I thought organ
means, “Can you play organ?” [Laughs.]
I said, “What is relation between driving and playing
organ? Why is he asking me?” I said, “I cannot play organ.”
He told me, “Oh, we cannot give you driver's license then!”
[Laughs.] He just teasing me. He said, “You cannot do any playing? Nothing? Guitar? Anything?”
I said, “No.” [Laughs.]
JAVAD KIANI, Iran
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