Family, life and migration

Hey !!! How's everybody? Sorry for my absence the last few weeks, I decided to take a trip to the outside of the city to visit my grandparents. Have you noticed how beautiful the countryside is? large green fields, you can harvest your food, there is no traffic and the nights are extremely quiet. This little vacation break made me question: What would my life have been like if my parents hadn't moved to the city?

During this short time that I shared with my grandparents, I was able to hear how their life has changed since my parents and my uncles migrated to different cities, as well as how the passing of the years and the difficult access to health has affected them. My grandparents say that when my mother was young and in love with my father they used to have huge crops, so much so that they look like a green sea, and then all the children helped to harvest to earn money for living, they still remember the joy of when their children managed to finish high school, that was a masterful achievement because none of my grandparents could finish school. My mother was the first to leave town, she was pregnant with me and was followed by my uncles, it was a generalized situation in all the families in the area that their children began to migrate to other areas of the country. Today the town of my grandparents has almost no children, or young people running through its streets, which is a place where old age dominates.

Intrigued by the words of my grandparents, I decided to ask my mother what it was like for her to live in the city as a small-town girl, her answer was interesting but quite crude at the same time, my parents went to the city because they wanted a future for me. They wanted to continue studying and go to university, however, they did not imagine how difficult it would be to adapt to this life, getting a house was not easy because life in the city is very expensive, and with my pregnant mother and my father studying we did not have many economic possibilities. Also getting a job was eventually difficult, my mother did not have university studies and nobody wanted to hire my father due to lack of experience, the job opportunities were many but the demand was massive, so the possibility of getting a job was low. With the time, living in a small apartment, in a city full of noise where it was possible to hear the fights of the neighbors and the pity of smock predominated, my mother began to question if it was the right decision to continue in the city, she missed the countryside, the rivers, and the bird's nest when she woke up, although she knew that studying in the rural area affect in a significant way the chance to go to university and to be honest I was also a very sick girl so I need constant visits to the doctor.

            After both testimonies I began to question how this affected me, for my parents it was not easy and neither for my grandparents, but ... what has it been like for me to grow up in the city? It was interesting, we lived with people from all places, it was a somewhat poor area where most of the migrants and foreigners lived, it was great to be able to experience going to the movies with friends or to a large shopping center, I loved it. But, sometimes I think about how my life would have been if my grandparents and uncles had been with me, maybe I had learned to sew like my grandmother or my grandfather had taught me to ride a bicycle, I ask myself sometimes if my uncles had been in my recitals and birthdays.

As a conclusion to all this journey, I understood that migration is not easy and affects everyone in a significant way. I was able to appreciate how 3 generations of a family were affected by migration to the city, how my grandparents miss their children, how my parents fought to survive in the city, and how discrimination affected me when other children considered me less for being a migrant. Migration is not an easy decision, but it can improve lives progressively, I hope to go further than my parents and have a business, buy them a nice house, take my grandparents to the doctor and hire someone to help them on the farm. This is my experience about the last 2 weeks, I will be writing to you soon, does anyone identify with my story?