Before I start, I want you to please bear with me on the way I write, I have very little general education and so I know beforehand that I will be making lots of grammatical errors, I will, however, try not to make too many, after all the whole purpose of an article is to read.
I have tried to write about my story for quite a while now and honestly, I’ve always been so worried (afraid) about what people might say about me, especially in the time we’re living in where racism and all that crap is all over the news, and of course, let’s not forget that there are many out there wanting us back to where we came. I understand their position. I don’t feel entitled to be treated any differently after we broke the law, even though some of us didn’t know or did not have a choice because someone else made the decision for us.
The reason why am writing this is that I hope that I can be an inspiration to some of you out there struggling to be a professional or whatever you want to be, lots of my friends have asked me to write about it and I’ve always refused for so many reasons, but here I am, trying to make sense of what has happened in my life, add a narrative to it and hoping to give you some hope and examples that, when you are committed and work hard you can become whoever you want to be regardless of where you come from or if you don’t have the necessary resources to achieve your goals.
My brother Carlos, our dog Rambo and me. Early 2000’s
This is me in the white shirt, black pants( women pants), and 2 sizes bigger shoes because you know, they have to last at least one year or two. Here I am with one of my older brothers in the only picture I have of those years. As I said, am wearing a pair of jeans that I got from one of my dad’s bosses daughter. Man, I loved those pants, they lasted about 3 years of constantly wearing them.
You might be asking why women pants? well where I come from a pair of new jeans were like $20, approximately a week worth of work or more. If you are lucky you get a pair of semi-used jeans every year, in this case I got so lucky that this guy donated us some clothing and these happened to fit me.
I grew up in the most rural areas of El Salvador, Sonsonate Nahulingo, you know, where there’s no electricity and you go to bed at 6:00-7:00pm because it gets really dark outside that you can’t even see your hands, and you use a Candil (a metal can full of gas and a cloth sticking out of the cap) to light up the house, of course this is if you have enough to buy the gas, otherwise, you need to go to bed as soon as it gets dark, I don’t remember at what time it starts to get dark but I would guess around 5:30pm.
When it comes to school, most of the kids start later in life, I started school at the age of ten because you usually skip pre-school and kindergarten due to the lack of money to buy the necessary school supplies and school uniforms.
Schooling and commuting is always a challenge, I would walk to school for about an hour everyday. In the winter you usually take your shoes off, roll up your pants and put your books in a plastic bag so that they don’t get wet, umbrellas don’t exist, unless you make your own with a leaf of a banana tree. If one of your books gets wet, oh boy you’re screwed, you need to let it dry and keep on using it even if the lines on the sheets disappear, theres no money to buy new books, not even for lunch, sometimes my dad would give me $0.25 to buy myself some lunch but most of the time I ate until I returned from school. School starts at 12:00pm and it ends at 5:15pm, you gotta make sure you eat something before you go because if you don’t, most likely you don’t eat until you’re back. Most of the people in the rural areas don’t know how to read or write, none of my parents have a degree, I think my dad only finished 1st grade while my mom learned to somewhat to read and write on her own by reading the Bible.
Anyways, that’s a little background of where I came from and some of the challenges I’ve faced growing up.
#software-engineering #childhood #ios #programming #immigrants
