Migration stories

I'm not nearly as far away as I think I am. I go into the office in the morning, fire off a quick hello email to Simp, then check the news on the BBC, the Guardian and the Irish Times. This has been my ritual for the last 4 years, and it makes me forget that I live anywhere remotely different to you guys. (Though for the record, I do read the national goresheet in the taxi on my way to the office too).
Yesterday I read a good feature in the Guardian about Central American migrants taking the freight train from Mexico to the US: it was based on a documentary that was shown on Channel 4 last night. Put me in mind of lots of people here.

Jesus is a driver with an NGO I work quite closely with - though obviously, Jesus isn't his real name. I chose it because his defining characteristic is his evangelical Christianity. You get lots of that around here, and many of my colleagues are profoundly and publically religious. Rosary beads hanging over the rear view mirror, blessings and prayers as greetings, that sort of thing. Jesus is of a different order, although he's by no means unique. He refuses to dance because it's forbidden by his church. The radio in his organisation's car is constantly tuned to a Christian pop station, to which he listens good naturedly and insistently: he's aware that his faith seems strange to our western eyes, and he's indulgent of our discomfort, and probably a little sympathetic to our inevitable damnation. He's a lovely man (about my age I think). By all accounts, before he found god, he was a hellraiser and a womaniser: you'd never think.

Jesus' other defining charateristic is his poverty, about which he's not a bit subtle. He has four daughters under the age of eight, and he lives way outside of the city in a barrio that neither buses nor taxis will enter because of the gang activity. He can't afford his own car, so he walks home from the bus stop, and walks his girls to school. A typical conversation with him might go like this:

Me: How are things Jesus?
J: Alright thanks to God. Life is very difficult when you're poor but the Lord is watching out for us and you have to trust that he will look after you.
Me: Of course. How were your holidays?
J: They were good, very hot [here, hot weather is seen as one more curse sent upon the Honduran people, and the bitter wind that's whipped us for the last week is considered delightful, fresh and pleasing]. I worked on odd jobs for the week. I'm trying to save money to buy a car. Some day God will help me, but he only helps people who make an effort for themselves, so I will do my part and pray that the Lord might one day do his.

My friend who is Jesus' colleague points out that if he didn't give all his money to that evangelical church, he might be able to save for a car. She doesn't point this out to his face though.

It's not surprising, all this considered, that early this year, Jesus decided to try his luck travelling to the US. His wife has brothers and uncles living there, and they encouraged him to take the risk, skip the border and live there for 5 years, sending home enough money to raise the living conditions of his family back in Tegus. He agreed with his boss (an ex-pat) that he could take a month's unpaid leave to try it. If he got deported within the month, his job would be there for him. He paid a coyote a couple of thousand dollars to run him over the border, and in February, he set off on the trip.

Jesus' colleagues were worried about him, but he had the conviction and serenity of the saved: in spite of the devastatingly low chances of success, he was sure he'd make it. He didn't. They were arrested in Mexico, him, the coyote and another guy, and shipped back to the north coast of Honduras, where he suffered the indignity of being taken in by Casa de Migrantes, a migrants' charity that his erstwhile organisation supported. He wasn't willing to cut his losses. He decided to try again, on his own, back up through Mexico, and across the border this time. He was arrested within days, and spent two weeks in a US prison while they waited to have enough deportees to fill the transport. Back in Tegucigalpa in shame, he had outlasted the agreed month's leave, but succeeded in returning to his job.

Now, Jesus' story is far from the worst. He took a calculated gamble, and succeeded in ensuring that when it failed, things were no worse than they had been before. He got his job back, returned to his wife and children, and generally went back to being a poor religious Honduran doing his best to survive, mostly cheerfully and with a support network around him. It's strange though that this situation can exist in an international NGO, but it does in all of them. Alongside the ex-pats who earn enough - and have enough holiday time - to travel home to the US or Europe at least once a year, there are people whose situation is so desperate (in spite of earning a reasonable wage by local standards) that they're willing to leave their families and risk their lives to make things better. People here are so vulnerable, and us ex-pats, we're not.
I have an Irish friend who was directly challenged by her Honduran colleague. Our colleagues know how much we earn, and this one wanted to know what my friend needed all that money for. She didn't have children or a mortgage, she wasn't looking after her parents. This woman had a job as a cleaner; my friend had worked her way through a Masters to get to that position. But still. The inequality I keep denouncing: it´s closer too than I admit. We're all a part of it.

This week, privileged me, I feel a little Simp-sick. It's his birthday on Wednesday, and I don't like being so far away. All this moral confusion and vulnerability: I yearn a little for my cosy bourgeois Guardian-reading life in Dublin. Things like this blog, your emails, my morning news check, they keep me cosy and bourgeois - but they also keep me going. So keep them coming!

Happy birthday simp. xxxxx