In October during my visit to Costa Rica I met up with a friend from the states. My sister and I met with her and her parents and we shared our story. Her father has a TV show on the local cable network. He invited me to come on the show and at the beginning of November and I took him up on the offer.
It was an interesting experience. I think I was a little nervous to start, but I think it turned out very nicely.
Let me know what you think!
Back in July I was in a press conference with some other Salvadoran adoptees and the organization that reunited us with our families. Here are a few videos from that day.
I’ve been waiting for this Friday since I knew he was coming. I wake up early in the morning trying so hard to be awake and start up my day, I have to be ready for work today, but I am so exited cause it is not a normal day for me, reason why I look for a nice dress and try to make myself look a little nicer. It feels like you are going to meet someone that you’ve been really looking forward to meet. So I make it to work and finally get there, start my day as usual but somehow is not the same, then my phone rings and I pick up: “Hey there!, can you hear me?” … my heart pumps up! That’s him…” Hey guess what? My flight was canceled and now I will be delayed, I will be there at 7pm your time…” And I think to my self: “Great! I really want him to be here and they cancel the flight! Any way, waiting for tonight is not a big deal” so I replay: “ Don’t worry I will be there!” and the conversation ends with the same words as usual: “ OK, love ya! Bye…”
The day seems to be slower than usual but it turned to be longer! Another call saying he will be arriving even later! I can’t believe it! Somehow it makes me think about the day we fist met, there was no longer day than that day, but tonight waiting at the airport for almost 3 hours is getting close.
Finally he made it! Looking at him walking through the gates carrying a lot of suitcases and a huge box made me think to my self: “He is definitely part of the family, right?” and the next step: hugs and kisses, welcomes and lots of love! I have him here…
Every time he comes is a really nice experience, no matter my responsibilities, the job I have to perform and the time I may not share with him, he is here! These days I wish I could be 4 persons at once, but all the effort is good while we have our singular chats at night, we just can’t go to sleep, we gotta talk! Sharing our life and feelings, always keeps us close, and that’s our mission in life: to be there for each other.
Its been a busy week here in Panama. I’ve been working with my family to help them set up their computer network. I finally have some free time, so I thought I would write about what had to be one of the worst traveling experiences in my 10 years of going to Central America.
It all started last Friday morning at 4am in Boston. That’s when I had to get up for my 6am flight. I’m not a big fan of early flights, but it helps in case you miss a connection or something. Anyway, I arrived in North Carolina around 8:30. On my way to my next flight I passed one of the monitors only to see that my flight was canceled.
Canceled? I’ve never had a canceled flight before. Epically ON THE DAY OF THE FLIGHT. When I get to the “would be” gate no one is there. I guess I was supposed to know what to do on my own. I found an agent at another gate and she told me to go to the service desk.
The service desk was moving very slowly…of course. Thankfully when it was my turn the agent tells me they are putting me on a 7pm flight out of Miami. I thought, “This isn’t too bad. At least I will be there tonight.”
I arrived in Miami around 2:30 in the afternoon. I signed up to use the internet and settled in for a 5 hour wait before my next flight. As 7 drew closer they made an announcement that there was something wrong with my plane and that we could not take it. Perfect. However, they did have another plane and they assured us it would only be a 45 minute delay.
We finally start boarding the plane AT 7:45. Around 8:10 we were all on and just sitting there. The captain informed us that we are waiting for catering. This turns into another 20 minute wait. Then it starts to rain and they close down a runway. We finally get out of there around 9.
Oh, and the catering we were waiting all that time for, is just drinks. They didn’t even feed us.
Once we landed I got out only to find an hour and half line for customs in front of me. Luckily they didn’t lose my bags, and my sister was there waiting for me.
We finally got home around 2am my time. By this time I had been up for 22 hours.
I think the only good part of the day was the car ride to my sister’s house. My niece and I were sitting in the back seat falling asleep on each other. I had this feeling like: This is the reason I put up with all the headaches of traveling. To be here in this car with my family. Somehow, in that moment, it all seemed worth it.
I’ve been running around all day getting ready for my trip to Costa Rica and Panama. I leave tomorrow morning bright and early. This is going to be a business trip of sorts.
I’m working on a project with my family in Panama. My father Luis has an embroidery business that he has been running in Panama for almost 20 years now. (After he left the revolution in the mid 80s he moved to Panama to rebuild his life. I may add a post about this part of the story.)
I’m working to help them create an order tracking system. I would like this to be a pilot for a bigger project of creating an open-sourced business resource for Central America. I’ll probably put a post up about that when I have a better idea what it is going to be all about.
In the mean time I am planning to do some more video interviews with various family members. Keep an eye out for those sometime next week!
Here is the article that appeared in today’s Boston Globe:
Reestablishing family ties – The Boston Globe: “Tears welled in Imelda Auron’s eyes before she began speaking.
The 31-year-old West Roxbury resident was one of thousands of Salvadoran children separated from their families during the 1980s, while the country was engulfed in civil war.
She had never spoken publicly about her situation or her reunion with her birth family.
But yesterday, sitting next to two other Massachusetts residents who have had similar experiences, Auron finally felt comfortable enough to discuss the joy, heartache, and anxiety that marked her quest to find her family.”
The article appeared in the City/Region section and had a couple of pictures that you can’t see as part of the online version. One of those pictures features half of my ear. 🙂
I only just met Imelda the other day, but I give her a lot of credit. I know it wasn’t easy for her to talk about what happened to her family. She did great. I hope talking about it will help her hear and deal with some of the feelings surrounding the death of her parents.
My sister and I have gotten a lot of comments on our video that we made, but what people may not realize is that it took many years of healing to be able to talk about everything so openly.
People may also not realize how lucky we are to live in a county that protects our freedom of speech. We may not always agree with our leaders and we may speak negatively about them but we don’t have to worry about the government storming into our homes and killing our loved ones.
I’m really happy we were able to get some press and I am very exited to work with everyone on building this network and getting our story out there.
Over the past few weeks I have been working on putting together an e-book of our story. I am taking some of the posts from the blog and organizing then in chronological order to make it easier to follow. I hope to be done with this project very soon and I will be posting it here for people to download. Be sure to check back!
On a slightly different note, I took part in a press conference today. This press conference was set up to announce the formation of the Pro-Busqueda Network that I blogged about earlier. We had a lot of help from Physicians for Human Rights to organize the conference.
Myself and two other people who had been separated from their families gave statements. We shared a little about our stories and what we are hoping to get out of the network.
Check tomorrow’s Boston Globe for coverage!
Okay, so Nelson/Roberto has been getting on my case to actually contribute here. I promised I would in January, but then I got into my last semester of college and things were crazy and hectic. But I digress. For those who don’t know me, my name is Derek, and I am Nelson’s brother. My biological parents are his adoptive parents. I was born on May 30, 1985, two years to the day after my parents took him from the orphanage in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
For this post I’ll deal with the beginning, at least the beginning for me. Obviously I knew from early on that Nelson was ‘different’ and my parents explained to him and I as best they could about who he was and what they knew, which wasn’t much. At that age, it doesn’t really matter. Family is family. Nelson was and is my brother in every meaning of the word. He has always looked out for me and I knew that he cared. We were very close, even though he was four years older than me.
My brother has already written about the night when he found out that he had family looking for him, so I won’t repeat the basic events. I don’t remember any other time, before or since, that my parents sounded so serious when they mentioned that they needed to talk with us after dinner. Right now I’m sitting no more than thirty feet from where I was that night, and I can still remember the look on my their faces and on my brother’s. Obviously, when you hear those words as a kid, you think about divorce and my parents were quick to explain that that was not the reason for this talk. In hindsight, Nelson is right to say that it didn’t make sense, but as I will reiterate later, the first thoughts of a 12 year-old on anything are not always rational.
As they explained the situation, I probably must have turned as white as a sheet, which is impressive for me considering my normal pallor. My first thought was that now that Nelson’s real family had found him, they would want him to live with them and I would never see him again. Looking back, it sounds silly, but I really felt scared for a bit that I would lose my brother forever.
Pretty soon, it will have been ten years since that night and instead of losing a brother, I’ve gained an entire second family. I can understand the apprehension that somebody might feel in this situation. I experienced a lot of new things and it wasn’t always easy, but I’m glad now that it happened. Everyone has been so welcoming, from the very first letters that our parents read to us that night through all of the visits and the other correspondence I have never once felt like an outsider, always like a member of the family. That’s enough for now, I’ll relate some of my other thoughts later.
Pro-Búsqueda is putting together a network for families of people that have been reunited or who are thinking about reuniting. This is the brief description of what they are trying to create.
What we wanted to initially do was to put people who have been reunited in touch with each other, so they can share their experiences and look at positive ways to remain involved with their biological families, with Pro-Búsqueda and with El Salvador. We also see the network of ‘jóvenes reencontrados’ as a good way to pass on information to others in the same situation who have still not found, or made the trip back to meet, their biological families. As I’m sure you know, it’s quite a daunting experience to come back to a country which you hardly remember (or don’t remember at all), to meet a family which you didn’t know existed, so it would be great if there was some more support State-side for people trying to prepare for a reunion.
This sounds like a great idea to me. While meeting my family was a great experience for me, it was also difficult at times. Not difficult because we didn’t get along, but difficult because I had no idea what to expect from them or from their culture. My childhood in the US was much different from my siblings’ in Central America. It was also difficult because here are these people who you are supposed to be very close with, but you really don’t know them at all.
Honestly, I don’t know if I would have used a resource like this when I met my family, but that’s just because I was a lot younger back then.
I think this is a great idea and I can’t wait to get this going. On a side note, it looks like Sunnaze who I wrote about earlier is going to be involved with this as well.
My very first video interview with my older sister Eva.