I watched a documentary last night on CBC, called "Run For Your Life". A journalist and camera crew are following a group of Honduran men who have left their towns and families to illegally make the way to the north in search of money to send back home. I know you hear about these things happening often and all, but this, this was something else for me. In 2005 I spent a month in a rural Honduran village. Pretty much everyone between the age of 16-30 were gone from the village - all of them made this trip to the north. While I was there, I got to be really close with two of the girls in the village - karla and jessenia - and the day before I left, jessenia's older sister (16 at the time) climbed into a truck with 15 young people from other villages and began the journey north. Watching this documentary, I just couldn't help thinking that Karla and Jessenia are going to be the same age as all these people who are running north. Its one thing to sort of know what they have to go through before the make it to the american border, but its something else to watch these guys climb on trains and run from gangs and police and live on nothing, all in the hope of something better.
I often think about getting back there. I wonder what i would find if I walked into that village again. Karla and Jessenia are both turning 16 this year. And last night, watching the documentary, I couldn't help but scan the faces of the other people on these trains, even though I know the years for filming it are probably way off with the ages of the girls, I still couldn't help looking to see if maybe I recognized one of them.
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/runforyourlife/
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